


Becoming Ninja

by HeraldAros



Series: Becoming Ninja [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, Naruto
Genre: (it's acknowledged at the time that the characters Are Not Dating For Reals), (team 7 gives them shit about it though), Awkward Roommate Situation, Canonical Minor Character Death, Child Soldiers (about as overt as canon), Crossover, Cultural Differences, Fish out of Water, Gen, Itachi's Tsukuyomi is torture and you will not convince me otherwise, Keyblades (Kingdom Hearts), Kids being kind to kids, Ninja Bootcamp, Original Mythology, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SERIOUSLY THAT GRAPHIC VIOLENCE WARNING APPLIES TO CHAPTER TEN, TRAINING MONTAGE!, Trauma (that isn't acknowledged or officially treated wtf are you ninja doing to your kids), Violence, Wakes & Funerals, buckle up 'cause shit's going down, mentioned minor character death, minor character injury, ok there's a Hangout That Is Def Not A Date in chapter 14 but otherwise the story is gen, we've hit the Konoha Crush y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2018-12-09 05:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 126,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeraldAros/pseuds/HeraldAros
Summary: When Riku accidentally hurts Sora, his mother ships him off to learn chakra control from his uncle, for everyone's sake. It turns out that thirteen years as a civilian does not really prepare him to deal with all these ninja. Along the way, he makes friends, is subjected to trainings montages, learns some cool moves, gets a Keyblade, and decides what he wants to do with his life, more or less in that order.Or: One part cliché crossover prompt, one part Outsider POV for the Naruto series, and three parts "you know what Kingdom Hearts' Plot Kudzu problem really needs? Forceful application of Naruto's plot shenanigans. That will definitely, absolutely help, and not result in any headaches whatsoever." Originally written in 2010, never posted, now being dusted off and revised.





	1. Our Story Begins

**Author's Note:**

> So way back when in 2010, there were a whole bunch of crossovers where a character from one canon would be related to a character from another. In chat with a friend, I basically decided to attempt this kind of crossover with the two major fandoms I was in at the time. After all, Riku and Kakashi both have the same color hair, so _obviously_ they could be related, right? Right?
> 
> I got 14 chapters and half a million sprawling headcanons into this 'verse, ultimately wimped out of posting it anywhere, and eventually stopped writing. But I did not stop _thinking_ about it. And every time something new came out (arcs in Naruto and games in Kingdom Hearts), I'd sit there and consider: how would this change the AU?
> 
> And now, after seven years, I'm going to post it for people who are not me and that original friend to read.
> 
> A couple story notes:
> 
> If you are here JUST for the Kingdom Hearts, the good news is that Riku is the protagonist! The bad news is that he leaves Destiny Islands in chapter one, and while I have Plans(TM) for how this works into the main KH plotlines, we're over a year out from the first game, timeline-wise. Likewise, past the first chapter, the KH gang isn't going to be in this fic, outside of memories, mentions, etc. That's why they aren't tagged.
> 
> If you are here JUST for Naruto, the good news is that you're familiar with the world and the majority of the characters! You could treat this as an "OC Hatake hangs out with Team 7 and Stuff Changes as a result" fic. The changes will be small at first, but they build. As far as the timeline is concerned, this fic comes in between the Wave and Chuunin Exam arcs.
> 
> This fic is un-beta'd, since I haven't been actively involved in a fandom in yeeeeeears and all the friends I used to ~~harass~~ ~~bribe~~ ask to read things over for me have jobs and lives and so forth. _However!_ The fic in its original incarnation was beta'd (the original chapters were more co-written) by tumblr user [@dropitlikeitshod](http://dropitlikeitshod.tumblr.com/), who deserves credit for this getting to 14 chapters instead of fizzling out after three. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited to add: CONTENT WARNING for a non-explicit panic attack (holy shit how did I miss that the first time); also I fixed a bit of the formatting and added a couple lines, nothing major.

The sky is overcast; the sand on the beach is still damp from the morning rain, even though the sky is edging into a deep purple sunset now. Below, Kairi and Selphie collect shells, while Tidus and Wakka hunt for crabs on the other side of the island. Sora and Riku are where they usually are: next to the paopu tree, sword against sword.

At twelve, Sora is a solid little tank of a fighter. He’s late for his growth spurt and steady on his feet for it, whereas Riku shot up an inch and a half in the last couple months and, sometimes, it feels like his feet are everywhere _but_ where he expects them to be.

They’re four for four, and Riku’s hair is still damp from when, in the first match, Sora bull-rushed him and knocked him into the ocean. Sora’s shirt is worse for the wear, though, especially on the back, where he’d fallen onto the dirt the few times Riku had been able to knock him down.

Both of them are bleeding a bit. Riku’s bicep was painfully introduced to the bark of paopu tree two matches ago. It’s mostly just scraped skin, but there’s blood welling up in a couple places. Meanwhile, Sora’s favoring his ankle ever since he banged it against the ladder in the fourth match, and his knuckles are scraped and bloody from trying to block Riku’s sword with his _hands_. Riku has avoided the same fate by _not being an idiot_ , and also by aggressively dodging rather than trying to block.

So they’re about evenly hurt, about evenly exhausted, and _definitely_ evenly motivated to take the advantage and win what will undoubtedly be the last match of the day—probably the last match for at least a week, even, because neither of their mothers like it when they come home bruised and battered.

They rush each other and exchange blows. Riku parries better, turning blocks (with his _blade_ , not his hands) into thrusts past Sora’s guard. Sora is faster, though, and smaller. He pivots, sliding past Riku’s strike and returning it, aimed for his _face_ , because Sora is a _brat_.

Riku ducks, and Sora laughs as he tries to kick out Riku’s knees. _Brat_.

Playing defense _sucks_ , and Riku’s always liked a good offense better. It grates, to parry and dodge while Sora bounces from attack to attack. Literally _bounces_ , on the balls of his feet, until he needs the balance of a grounded stance.

Again: Sora is built like a tank. Riku tries to rock him, make him falter, but Sora counters with a move that he definitely didn’t learn from Riku—his blade smacks into Riku’s hand, painfully, and out of shock, Riku’s grip slips and his sword goes flying, landing less than a foot from the bridge.

Sora follows that up with a shove while Riku is still stunned, sending him backward into the paopu tree. His back hits the bark this time, and his footing slips, dropping him straight onto the ground and knocking the back of his skull into the tree trunk. When Riku catches his breath and lifts his still-spinning head, Sora stands over him, sword leveled obnoxiously at his face, grin splitting Sora’s own.

Normally, Riku might hit the tree and tumble over it, use it as cover so he could get over to his sword.

Normally, Riku’s hand isn’t smarting from getting hit, and his arm isn’t aching. Normally, his hair isn’t sticking uncomfortably to the back of his neck, and his shirt isn’t stiff from drying seawater. Normally, he and Sora haven’t fought _eight times in a row_ , and he’s normally not so tired. Normally, he doesn’t have to look up at Sora. Normally, he isn’t on his ass in the dirt because Sora is a _brat_.

Normally, Riku would be a good sport and suck up his loss. Normally, Riku would not launch himself at Sora, hand outstretched to yank his sword out of _his_ hand.

Today isn’t a normal day. Riku’s hand connects with Sora’s forearm. Sora stumbles forward. Catches himself, pulls back. Riku doesn’t let go. He _needs_ this win. He’s tired. Hurt. Older than Sora, and bigger than Sora. _Better_ than Sora. He shouldn’t lose. He can’t lose.

His hand is on Sora’s arm. He can feel the bones under his fingers. He loses time—

his vision doesn’t go black, or red, it just _skips_ —

Sora’s falling on top of him, and under Riku’s hand, under the skin, Sora’s bones _shift_ — 

his ears are ringing with Sora’s scream, and Riku can’t—

Sora was standing and whole a minute ago—

his hand is the only thing keeping Sora’s arm straight—

he doesn’t _understand_ —

 

Sora’s scream tapers off into gasps and sobs. 

///

One month. One month of Riku’s mother watching him all the time. One month of a new curfew, and silent disapproval when he goes over to Sora’s house. (One month of going to Sora’s house and not being allowed to see him, to talk to him.) One month of stilted dinner conversations about  _guilt_ and _responsibility_.  
  
It’s been one month since Riku broke Sora’s arm. He dreams about it, often; when his mind drifts, he can remember what it felt like. Not the act itself: he still doesn’t know how that happened. It shouldn’t have happened at all. Normally—

Well. No point in dwelling on “normally.”

Everything else, though: before, Sora’s arm, warm and skinny in his hand, and after, Sora curled up on top of Riku like so many other times, when Sora didn’t feel well or got scared during a sleepover and wanted cuddles. Sora’s arm, bent unnaturally, and Sora whimpering every time it shifted.

It’s been a month, but Riku’s not sure he’ll ever forget. Certainly everyone around him isn’t going to anytime soon. Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka have turned studious overnight, always at someone’s house to do homework or projects or studying. Even when they aren’t at each other’s houses, they spend their free time on beaches far, far away from Riku.  
  
Kairi, at least, spends an inordinate amount of time at Riku’s house, but she spends it staring at his hands. Her thoughts are obvious; every time Riku glances at her, he can see them, as clear as the moon in a calm night sea.  
  
Riku broke Sora’s arm barehanded. He hadn’t meant to; he hadn’t been trying to. It just—happened.

Still, Kairi’s scrutiny is better than the concern Riku gets from his mother. Dinners are a trial. She wants to talk to him about what happened. He doesn’t want to talk to Kairi about it, he doesn’t want to talk to Sora’s mom about it, he doesn’t want to talk to the doctor about it, and he doesn’t want to talk to his mother about it.  
  
He might talk to Sora, when he can apologize. When he’s _allowed_ to apologize, because first, he has to get past the doctor and Sora’s mom, and the first time was bad enough. They asked question after question— _where did you hit him_ and  _why were you fighting_ and  _how much force did you use_  and  _were you trying to hurt him_ —and all he wanted to say was no, no, _no_ , he hadn’t  _meant_ for that to happen, how could they _ask_  him that, did they really think he would ever, could ever,  _intend_ to break Sora’s arm?  
  
Riku hasn’t gone to school since that day. Kairi drops off his homework—and takes the completed work back with her—and tells him bluntly that the teacher doesn’t want to see him right now. The other kids are probably afraid, she adds.  
  
Then she says, “I know better. You didn’t mean to do it.  _I’m_ not afraid of you,” and smiles.  
  
It’s a lie, that last part. (He _hopes_ just that last part.) A small one. She watches his hands, but when they’re both in the Secret Place and he slumps to the side, she lets him rest his head on her shoulder. She even curls an arm up, bony elbow on his shoulder and fingers running through his hair. She never flinches away from him.

“So you and Sora carved all of these?” she asks, voice soft.

Riku traces the pictures with his eyes, trying to remember each one—and, when he can’t, trying to at least pick out which were his and which were Sora’s. “Yeah. I was the first one he showed this to, and neither of us brought anyone else here.”

“Until now.” Kairi’s hand stills. “Why show me now?”

Quiet: not silence, because the little waterfall outside is muffled but audible. Riku can hear Kairi’s heartbeat, picking up a little bit—not in fear, but maybe in anticipation. (Maybe in fear, but god, he hopes not.) The cave has always smelled a little wet, a little mossy, with the salt tang creeping in like it does anywhere on the islands. Today, though, it also smells like the fruity perfume Kairi and Selphie like to play around with. (Thankfully, Kairi has always worn it a lot lighter than Selphie does; Riku doesn’t mind fragrances in small doses.)

Riku sighs. “We should’ve showed you a while ago. Sora’s been asking, but I kept telling him no.” 

Selfish, pure and simple. Riku doesn’t share well, and never really has. Kairi’s his friend, but Sora was his _first_ friend, and he was the first person Sora showed the Secret Place to, and he wanted to keep that between them for as long as possible. Forever, if he could manage it.

He doesn’t want that anymore.

Kairi nods, fingers carding through Riku’s hair again. She doesn’t ask why Riku said no. She doesn’t ask why he changed his mind. Instead, she presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Thanks, Riku.”

Again, quiet. Riku counts easy breaths in and out. Counts Kairi’s heartbeats. He doesn’t know when it happens, but their hearts sync up. It feels comfortable, natural: the two of them, in the dim, filtered light of the Secret Place, quiet and just breathing together, hearts pumping in the same slow rhythm.

///

That conversation makes him feel a bit better, and if nothing else happened, the rest of his week would be fine. He’s got it all planned out, down to what he’ll say to Sora when Sora is finally allowed outside and _not-in-pain_ enough to see him. Riku’s never been very good at apologies, but Sora is his oldest friend and his best friend, and deserves the best apology Riku can muster. That will _not_ be an apology he comes up with on the spot, after going so long without seeing one another, so. Planning.

Riku has a _script_. And, for afterward, he has a _schedule_ , of all the things he’s going to do to prove to Sora that he takes their friendship seriously. Hospitalizing Sora probably put a dent in that, but it’s _Sora_. Riku will still be atoning for this when Sora has long since forgiven him.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, though. That doesn’t mean _Sora_ isn’t worth the effort. More the opposite, really.

Besides, planning that out (and, he’s sure, putting those plans into action) gives Riku something to do. Something to focus on. He really, desperately needs that, because without it, he’s going to wind up focusing on how everyone else is focusing on _him_ , and, well. That won’t be pretty. At least this way, Riku can work around everyone else’s suspicions. Once Sora gets better, he imagines the situation will be a lot like when he and his mom first moved to the island, only he gets to start with Sora and Kairi as his best friends.  
  
Riku can handle that.  
  
Before he gets a chance, though, there’s a morning that dawns too bright, too early. He practically wakes up scowling, until he finally gives into his growling stomach and leaves his room. Once in the kitchen, he pours a glass of paopu juice and picks up the plate of buttered toast his mother left on the counter for him, but before he can join her in the living room, there’s an entirely out-of-place knock on the door.  
  
She opens it before Riku can tell her not to, before he can warn her that whoever is on the other side smells like blood and metal and sweat.  
  
His mother opens the door, and Riku, still in the kitchen doorway ten paces behind her, nearly drops both glass and plate.  
  
It’s—almost his father’s face. Almost. Not the kind of almost that nine years gone can account for; it’s a lot closer to how _Riku_ almost has his father’s face. The hidden eye isn’t anything he remembers, although that could happen in nine years, and anyone can put on a mask to cover half their face. The one visible eye is a little too sharp, and the nose under the mask isn’t pronounced enough. And, as far as he can remember, his father’s hair never looked like a bird had made a nest in it and then knocked it over as it flew away.  
  
While the man who looks like his father says, “Hello ma’am,” Riku turns around, walks back into the kitchen, and sets his half-full glass in the sink. Too sweet. Any more, and he’ll gag.

After a moment’s consideration, though, he decides to shove one piece of toast into his mouth, chewing quickly; with some weird father-lookalike stranger standing on their front porch, he probably needs all the energy he can get. And the toast is bland enough that, no matter _what_ happens next, it probably won’t come back up. Riku eyes the other piece of toast, but decides against wolfing that down, too.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he can hear his mother say. The walls are built to withstand storms, sure, but not to bottle up sounds.

The stranger says the same thing, in nearly the same words.

Riku strolls into the living room and leans back against the wall next to the kitchen door. Keeping the whole rest of the room between him and his mother, the door, and the stranger, he watches, eyes narrowing.

The two of them quickly give up on understanding _the same exact words coming out of the other person’s mouth_ , and resort to hand gestures, facial expressions (not very effective, considering sixty percent of the stranger’s face is covered), and increasingly frustrated complaints.

The stranger has a rolled-up piece of paper that he brandishes at Riku’s mother. The last time someone did _that_ , the paper was Riku’s latest test, the accusation was cheating, and his mother came very close to taking off the teacher’s brandishing hand. Or nose, whichever was closest when she finally lost it.

Riku was shuffled into the one other class rather quickly after that parent-teacher meeting. He wonders what the outcome of this one will be.

Instead of lunging, however, Riku’s mother nods repeatedly. “Yes! I wrote that!” she says, pointing with elaborate exaggeration at herself, then miming writing in the air.

From his place at the wall, Riku can’t make out the stranger’s reaction, but he does catch it when he’s pointed at. Riku’s mother turns, looks back at him, and nods again, pointing at the paper and then at Riku. 

The stranger, now fully in view of Riku and vice versa, looks him up and down and sighs _visibly_ , which is just insulting.

“Who are you?” Riku asks, then, without pausing, “Mom, who is he?”

Riku’s mother opens her mouth to answer, but gets cut off when the stranger says, “Ah, so _you_ can speak,” and he says a word that Riku’s never heard before. 

Riku’s mother’s mouth remains open. 

Riku tips his head to the side, brow furrowing. “Nihongo?” he tries to repeat, though it doesn’t quite sound right.

The stranger repeats the word, his one visible eye crinkling in what _might_ be a smile. It takes Riku two more tries to get it right; the stranger’s eye crinkles more each time.

“Riku,” his mother says, sounding—he doesn’t know, choked up? “You can understand him?”

“You can’t?” It’s a stupid question. He asks anyway, because he doesn’t know _how_ or _why_ he can. To him, the stranger sounds mostly the same as them—same language, anyway, and no real detectable accent.

Since it is a stupid question, she doesn’t bother answering. Instead, she says, “And he can understand you?”

Riku shrugs, looks back at the stranger. “I guess so. He said I can speak Nihongo, but I can’t, not really.”

“What are you speaking, then?” the stranger asks, which proves Riku right a little bit—but, maybe, also wrong?

Riku tells him the name of the Islander language, and when the stranger tries to pronounce it, he can’t quite get it right, even after three tries. He gets close enough, though.

The stranger seems to think about this, instead of trying a fourth time, and pronounces it, “Interesting.”

“You are speaking our language,” Riku’s mother confirms, “but he can understand you?” Riku nods, and his mother nods back. “That’s interesting. Maybe your father…”

Outside, the sun has almost totally risen. Riku can see it over the stranger’s shoulder. Lucky it’s a weekend, or else the street would already be bustling with kids off to clubs, or helping their parents out before school. As it is, the only ones up are the fishers, and they’ve been up before the sun and aren’t likely to return home anytime soon. The street outside looks empty, but it won’t stay that way for long. 

“My name,” the stranger says, and Riku inadvertently makes eye contact when he starts a little at the unexpected statement, “is Hatake Kakashi. I came here because of this letter. If I came to the correct place, you would be Hatake Riku, yes?”

Riku frowns. “No. My name’s _Riku Hatake_.”

“My mistake,” the stranger says easily. “Your father’s name was Sho?”

Both Riku and his mother stiffen at that—it seems that, whatever else is going on, his mother can still hear and recognize his father’s name. Riku crosses his arms across his chest. If he could lean more heavily against the wall behind him, he would. If he could lean _through_ the wall, all the way into his bedroom closet, he _would_.

His mother plants her hands on her hips. Mom-pose never means anything good when it’s directed at him, but this time, it’s not. “Riku. Ask him how he knows y— how he knows Sho.”

Riku swallows. His voice only cracks a bit when he asks, “How do you know my father?” He keeps his gaze focused on the stranger. To the side, his mom’s face softens, hands moving from her hips until she’s almost hugging herself.

The stranger says, “Sho was my brother.”

“Ah.” Riku swallows again before he tells his mom, “This is—Sho’s brother.” Calling that man his father once was enough for one day.

She nods slowly. “I asked him to come. Well. Not _him_ , specifically. I wrote a letter,” she glances at the letter still in the stranger’s hand, “to—to the rest of your family. Asking for help.”

“Help?” Riku can _feel_ the scowl forming on his face, muscles twisting up the same way it feels like his insides are. “This is because of Sora, isn’t it? Because of,” he starts to say _what happened_ , but they’ve had too many conversations about responsibility lately for that, “what I did?”

His mother sighs, and abandons the stranger in the doorway to cross the room to Riku. She raises one hand like she’s going to pet his hair, like Kairi did in the Secret Place; instead, her hand hovers next to his face a moment before landing, dragonfly-light, on his shoulder.

“Honey, there’s something you should know, about—well, about Sho. And his family.”

“I didn’t know I had an uncle.” It’s not as much of a non-sequitur as it sounds: he doesn’t know _anything_ about Sho Hatake, and especially not about Sho’s family.

The stranger—his uncle?—laughs. It isn’t a loud belly-laugh, like Sora’s dad’s, and it isn’t the nervous laugh of the town baker, either. It’s deeper and quieter.

“I didn’t know I had a nephew,” he says.

“Then I guess none of us knows anything.” Riku looks back at his mother, raises his eyebrows. _She_ seems to know some things, but she doesn’t seem like she’s in any hurry to share. She’s biting her lip, now, and her fingers are clenching and unclenching his shoulder.

He shrugs that shoulder, just enough to get her attention without knocking her hand loose. “Why’d you send that letter?”

“I was worried,” she says. “I thought—for the longest time, I thought we’d be fine. You take so much after me, after my family.” She raises her hand, lays her thumb next to his right eye. It’s almost the same color as hers, the same way her hand is just a shade or two darker than the cheek it’s cupping. “I thought you’d inherit our magic, and everything would be fine. And, darling, maybe you did, but it’s not _all_ you inherited.” It’s the first time his mother has ever admitted that her family is anything but totally normal. He wishes he could ask more about it—wishes the situation was different, wishes there wasn’t some stranger still in their doorway, wishes he’d never broken Sora’s arm.

Wishes she said something sooner, years ago. Wishes she had _taught_ him magic that could have put Sora back together, good as new.

“I don’t want anything of his,” Riku says, leaning into her hand. “Can’t you take it away? Get rid of it?” Magic can do anything, in the stories, sometimes. Maybe it can even do this.

“No, sweetheart, my moon and stars, I can’t.” She hesitates. “If I could have, I…” She doesn’t finish; he can only hope what she might have said. _I would have taken it away when he left. I would have gotten rid of anything of his that he didn’t take with him_. She had, she had given away or tossed out everything that he’d had a hand in making or using, except of course Riku himself.

That seems to be the problem.

“I don’t _want_ it,” he says again, then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Not wanting whatever it is Sho gave him has clearly not helped. Not acknowledging that there’s anything there to not want in the first place could very well have been what got Sora hurt—it certainly did him no favors. “What are we even talking about? Is it like magic?” 

His mother frowns, then tips her head in the direction of the door. The stranger. His uncle. “I’m not sure. It’s not...from the islands, it’s something Sho brought with him. I hoped Sho’s people might have more answers.”

Riku turns his attention back to the stranger, who has not moved any further into the house, but is now leaning against the doorframe, head cocked and single visible eye focused on Riku.

“What happened?” he asks. When Riku frowns at him, he says, “The letter mentioned some trouble, and a favor.”

“What’s he asking?” Riku’s mother wants to know, understanding the questioning tone if not the actual words.

Well. Riku has never liked playing telephone, and here, he thinks he has a good idea of the missing pieces.

“About a month ago, I—I hurt a friend. Broke his arm, with my bare hands, without _trying_ to. That’s not normal,” he adds, with a sharp glance at his mother; really, she couldn’t have mentioned anything about magic _then_? Even if it couldn't have helped Sora, he's spent the last month wallowing in guilt when he could have been learning _magic_ —healing magic in the stories is all quiet bells and the smell of a forest in a growing season, blood unspilt and flesh knit back together like it never split, bones reformed. Riku's always felt better _doing_ , and the act of learning how to fix his mistake would have been immensely preferable to all the conversations on personal responsibility that his mother cornered him into. “I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how _not_ to do it. But if it’s something your family can do, maybe you could teach me?”

“Tell him he has to train you,” his mother says, before the stranger can respond. Tightens her grip on his face and shakes him, a little. “ _Riku_. This is important. Tell him he has to train you.”

“Train me to what? Not break people’s arms? Or does _he_ know how to fix broken bones like magic?” It sounds far, far too useful a skill for anyone related to Sho to possess. (Riku has a flash of thought: _and I'm related to him too, maybe that's why she didn't_ ; he forcefully shuts the thought down before it can grow.)

His mother lets out a breath, sharp with urgency. “Train you, the same way your father started to be trained. He walked away; he said he was no good at it. We didn’t think—but you, Riku, you will be. You _need_ that training.”

Riku leans away from her, but she doesn’t let go. He says nothing. The stranger says nothing.

“ _Riku_. Tell him to train you. If you don’t, next time,” she pauses, and the look that crosses her face tells Riku long before the words register that what’s about to come out is not _anything_ he wants to hear. “Next time, sweetheart, it won’t be Sora’s arm. It’ll be his neck.”

His vision skips between loose moments, impressions: bone under his fingers; Sora, deadweight in his arms; scream choking off abruptly instead of dissolving wetly into sobs; no arm he can hold straight, just something made wrong by his hands that he can’t fix; _Sora_ made wrong, Sora broken and Riku unable to fix him or do anything to help; Sora _gone_ before Riku can do anything about it this time—

Sweet tang explodes in his nose, a moment before a splash and half his face is suddenly wet. Riku jerks back, bangs his head against the wall, choking and snorting liquid out of his nose. Juice slops in the cup. Riku looks up, and meets his uncle’s eyes.

“Smell is usually compelling,” he says, tone mild.

Riku’s only clue that his mother left the room is the towel she uses to wipe his face off. When she’s done, she takes it and the cup into the kitchen. The door closes behind her. In the other room, the sink turns out, then turns off. Riku eyes the door, but it doesn’t open.

The stranger doesn’t crowd Riku; instead, he walks back over to the front door. Before he can resume his position, though, Riku says, “You can come in and sit down.” He tries not to sound sullen, and fails.

The stranger’s eye crinkles into a smile (if that _is_ a smile), and he thanks Riku as he closes the door and takes a seat on the couch, facing an open window. Outside, the rest of the town is waking up.

Riku sits in the chair facing the stranger and a different window. This one shows him some trees, the side of a house, and, in the distance, the ocean.

“My mom wants me to ask you to train me.”

“Hm. And what do you want?”

A sigh. This would be an easier question to answer if Riku _had_ an answer; as it is, all he has is “to go back in time and stop myself, so none of this would happen.”

His mother’s answer is to get him training so it doesn’t happen in the future. That’s probably as close as it gets, but Riku doesn’t have to like it.

“Why did you come here?” he asks, and he thinks the stranger bites back a laugh.

It’s not very obvious, but there’s an amused tone to his voice when he says, “Maybe I just wanted to meet my nephew.”

Maybe he did, but when he says it like that, Riku definitely doesn’t believe him. “Try again.” 

That earns him another eye-crinkle. “Maybe I was curious.”

Plausible, from what little Riku’s been able to gather about this man in, what, fifteen minutes? “Curious about what?”

The eye un-crinkles. If anything, the stranger sounds disappointed when he says, “About the nephew I’ve never heard of, before that letter, of course.”

“So you were just planning to meet me and…go back home? That’s it?”

“Mmhm.” The eye-crinkle is back, and Riku narrows his eyes. He has enough experience with brats trying to get what they want from him ( _Sora and Kairi_ ) to have a sense for when he’s being manipulated.

He suspects that his uncle is, also, a brat. “And if I don’t believe you?” 

“Probably a good idea not to,” his uncle admits. “Ninja are notorious liars. Comes with the job.”

Riku…freezes, is a word for it. Even his brain goes all still and fuzzy for a moment; his mind unsticks before his body does, and he’s piecing together a dozen little connections from as far back as he can remember of his childhood to form a whole.

Breaking Sora’s arm barehanded. 

 _That’s not normal_.

The early fascination with swordplay; one of his oldest memories is of playing ninja and samurai with Sora, who always wanted to play the samurai because they were like knights. Riku can’t remember ever _wanting_ to pick anything but ninja.

From his history class: ninja are spies and assassins, double-agents and traitors. Only loyal to their lord, and willing to do anything and everything for that lord.

One of his few memories of his father, saying, _It’s not nice, where I’m from. It isn’t safe, for you or me or anyone_. (His mother repeated it, when they’d moved, after Sho left. Riku said, _good, I hope he goes back there, then_ , and his mother had hushed him, but not disagreed.)

Sho, telling him, _knives aren’t for children_ , with such a strange look on his face that it had stuck in Riku’s head.

 _Your father doesn’t like talking about where he grew up_.

When Riku was old enough to ask about the rest of his family: _you’ve met my parents, of course. Remember Christmas? And your…other grandparents are both dead._

Even later: _Sho told me his father killed himself. I don’t know anything else_.

“Oh.” Riku sits with the realization for a solid minute, staring out at the distant ocean next to his uncle’s ear.

His father had been a ninja. His mother knew, or knew enough to put it all together, and thinks that the only way Riku can keep from hurting Sora again is to be a _better_ ninja than his father. Meanwhile, with what crumbs of information he has about it, Riku’s really not sure he _wants_ to go to the place Sho Hatake had walked away from without a backward glance.

Still, Sora is worth it. Riku _can’t_ hurt Sora again, not even accidentally.

“Can you train me? I mean, is that… Can you teach me how not to hurt people?”

“Yes, and no.” At Riku’s scowl, his uncle says, “Yes, in Konoha, you can get training. And yes, that training will help you avoid damaging the people around you. Accidentally, anyway.” Riku nods; he’s read enough books about knights and soldiers to have an idea of what training entails. If the problem is hurting Sora without meaning to, then he understands that the solution might be to figure out how to hurt people _if_ he wants to, and then just not do that when he’s with Sora.

“However,” his uncle says, and Riku jerks his gaze and his attention back to his uncle’s face, “I can’t teach you anything if you don’t agree to training.”

Ah. And his mother knew _that_ , too, which is why she pushed Riku to ask for training, specifically.

His uncle goes on: “It’s more of a commitment than I think you’re aware of.” Pause. “Sho walked away from that commitment. That will make things harder for you.”

“What do I have to do, then?”

His uncle’s eye crinkles, and he waves a hand. “The usual things. Swear loyalty to the village. Promise to serve Konoha, her citizens, and her interests, to the best of your abilities.” A pause, again. “That includes, of course, being physically present in order to serve.”

And, long before he walked away from his son and the woman he might have loved, Sho Hatake had walked away from his village and his brother. Had walked away from his oath and his duty.

Riku swallows. “How. How much trouble is he in? For leaving?”

His uncle sighs, audible through the mask, and remains quiet for several long seconds. “My brother was not very powerful or skilled, but our family has a certain reputation. Having him abandon the village was…embarrassing, but he was never likely to become a real threat.” Another few seconds. “He would probably be placed under house arrest, rather than executed.”

“And me?” At his uncle’s raised eyebrow, Riku adds, “I mean, you said it would make things harder for me. How much harder?”

“Ah. No, don’t worry about punishment. _You_ did nothing wrong. People will talk, and make assumptions. That’s all.” From the way he pauses after saying it, Riku isn’t sure even his uncle believes that will be the end of it.

Riku’s used to that much, though. He and his mother moved to this island when he was four: a young, single mother and her fatherless son, with some money but not very much. Riku’s mother could have told their new neighbors any story in the world and not a single one would believe it, let alone the truth. Talk and assumptions he can deal with.

“Will I be able to come back? Can my mom come with me? How long will I be in training for, anyway?”

His uncle blinks at him for several long beats before answering. “Most likely, though just to visit, of course. If she wants to, your mother is welcome in the village; there are civilians who live and work in Konoha. As for training, it depends on how quickly you learn.”

“ _Most likely_?”

“I don’t see why not, but there could be…complications.” His uncle shrugs.

That’s ominous enough that Riku gives up on asking any more questions in favor of following his mother into the kitchen. To be honest, about half his motivation is to _avoid_ getting any more ominous answers.

So he’s a little disappointed when he asks his mother, “Are you coming with me? He says you can, if you want to,” and his mother says, “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry.”

Even worse, she looks as heartbroken to be saying it as he feels, hearing it.

“Why not?”

The plate in her hand is near sparkling, but she keeps swiping the sponge over it. “I—Riku, I can’t leave the islands. This is my home, the only place I’ve ever known.” She smiles at him, but it’s small, anemic. “I’m too old to be going on adventures like that.” 

“You’re not _old_ …” he starts to say, but she’s sighing and shaking her head. He sighs, too. “It was worth a shot.” That doesn’t even rate a smile, so Riku changes tack. “He says he can train me, but I have to agree to some things.”

“I expected that much. It’s why I never tried to contact them before. Did he say what you’ll need to do?”

Riku leans against the counter, glancing back through the door to where his uncle is still lounging on the couch. “Swear I won’t leave, and I have to promise to protect the…village?” Riku frowns, thinking back, then nods. “He said the village.”

Putting the now-clean plate away, his mother asks, “Will you be able to visit?”

“Yeah.” He just won’t be able to come back to _stay_. “I want to make sure what happened doesn’t ever happen again, first, though. It might take a while.”

He’s assuming, anyway.

His mother nods. “Don’t worry about how long it takes, just do it _right_. Be sure.”

“I will.”

After that, the only thing that makes sense is to hug her. It goes on longer than he’d normally let it, but then again, they’re talking about Riku _leaving_ for some undefined length of time. If she squeezes him harder than normal, too, he doesn’t comment on it.

“I need to talk to Kairi and Sora. I can’t just leave without letting them know.” 

Again, she nods, though this time she looks troubled. “I doubt Hinako will let you talk to Sora alone, and this isn’t the sort of news to share in front of others. Maybe just tell Kairi?”

Riku’s first instinct is to refuse and insist that he’ll tell Sora himself, but his mother’s expression stops him and makes him think. Sora’s mother won’t let him be in the same room as Sora _supervised_ , let alone by themselves. If Riku can even get in, he can’t count on her keeping anything he says to herself, and “Riku left the islands to learn to be a ninja” isn’t really the kind of story he wants his mom to have to deal with when he’s gone. 

Kairi, though, has always been discreet. She can keep secrets. It’s part of why he showed her the Secret Place, after all, and why he’s always preferred spending time with her rather than Tidus, Selphie, or Wakka. (Sora, of course, is his first preference.)

“While you’re doing that,” his mother adds, “I’ll start packing your things.” She points a finger at him in mock-warning. “But I’m not doing all your packing for you, so don’t dawdle.”

Riku pretends to cower, promising to come back in a reasonable amount of time, and leaves his mother laughing in the kitchen. On his way to the door, his uncle stands up and falls into step behind him.

“Heading out?”

Riku nods. “I have to let a friend of mine know that I’m leaving. She’ll never forgive me if I take off without telling her.”

“Hmm. Is she trustworthy?” His uncle sounds bland, and when Riku looks at him over his shoulder, the man looks casual enough, but there’s some kind of focus to his words that Riku can’t quite place.

“Yeah. She won’t tell anyone if I ask her not to.”

His uncle hums, and falls even farther behind Riku. Is he not very talkative, or is this situation so awkward that even an adult doesn’t know how to handle it? Riku can’t imagine it’s any easier for his uncle to suddenly have a sister-in-law and nephew, especially a nephew who needs help like Riku does.

That thought leads to another—his uncle may have made some arrangements for Riku, but he hadn’t seemed to know exactly what was going on until he got here, so maybe he _hadn’t_ expected to bring Riku back with him. Would he have enough room for Riku? Would Riku be living with this man, or somewhere else? Was his uncle married—did he have kids of his own? Would Riku have to share a room?

“You’re thinking hard.”

Riku almost jumps, and Kairi knows it. She giggles.

“What’s on your mind?” she asks, keeping pace next to him. She doesn’t seem to notice Hatake, who’s now skulking next to the potter’s house. Riku might not notice him either, except that his uncle still smells like blood and metal, and not even the sea smell out here can drown that out.

“I’m leaving,” he says.

Kairi stares at him for a long moment. Her pace falters, and her face slips into blankness. “What’s the matter? Do you not want to go?”

He shrugs. “I don’t really have a choice. It’s—it’s because of Sora. I didn’t mean it like  _that_ ,” he adds, when she starts to scowl. “I mean, because I broke his arm. My mom sort of freaked out and sent this letter to my uncle. I’m going with him.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

Kairi lets out a breath of air in an angry huff, and then kicks a small rock for good measure. Riku tracks it; it only goes a few feet away before hitting a wall and stopping. It doesn’t even make a sound.

“That’s so unfair,” she complains. “It’s not like you  _meant_  it. It was just an accident!”

“But what if it happens again?”

She turns to him, eyes narrowed. “It  _won’t_ happen again!”

“You can’t know that.”

“I  _do_ ,” she insists. “You and Sora, you’re  _friends_. You’d make sure you wouldn’t hurt him again. I know it.”

Riku looks away, uncomfortable. She may be convinced, but clearly his mother isn’t, and he isn’t either. Not if what his mother said is true—if this is something he got from his father.

Ninja kill people. Even when he thought being a ninja was just a storybook job, like a knight or a mage, he knew that much. Sho probably killed people. Same with his uncle. If he becomes a ninja, will he have to…?

“Riku! Snap  _out_ of it!”

He blinks. Kairi snaps her fingers in front of his nose one more time, then lowers her hand to her hip.

“That’s better. What were you thinking about this time?”

Riku glances around, and tries not to look suspicious. No one’s there. From atop the schoolteachers’ house now, Hatake flashes him a thumbs-up. Riku takes that as a “coast is clear” and turns back to Kairi.

“You’re not going to believe me, but…” He tells her. He tells her everything.

He expects her to laugh. She doesn’t. Instead, she’s silent for several heartbeats, and when she speaks, her voice is lowered.

“You guys believed me, when I said I came from a different world.” She looks up at him. “So I’m going to believe you now. Okay?”

He smiles. “Thanks.”

She smiles back. Then she looks down. “Have you told Sora yet?”

“I can’t. Mom doesn’t want me to.” Kairi opens her mouth, and Riku cuts off her response before she can get too angry. “So you have to tell him, for me.”

Her teeth click shut. After a second, she nods. “All right. What’s your mom going to tell everyone else?”

Riku shrugs. “That I’m going to stay with my dad’s family, probably. I don’t know.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Today. Soon.” As soon as this conversation is over and he finishes packing, but he can’t actually get those words out of his mouth.

At that, Kairi once again looks like she wanted to protest, but instead she shakes her head. “Wow. This is all happening really fast, isn’t it?”

Riku’s grin feels crooked. “Yeah. It sucks.”

She smiles, eyes shiny and lip quivering. “I bet.”

They walk quietly for a bit, heading off the street and onto a beach. It isn’t the most comfortable silence, but after a few minutes, Kairi leans into Riku and rests her head on his shoulder. They stop walking.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you guys, too.”

They stand like that for another minute or so—while Riku can  _feel_ Hatake’s eyes on them, his shoulder blades practically itch from the surveillance—until Kairi suddenly straightens.

“Oh! Oh, I just thought of something!”

“What?”

She tugs at her necklace—the same necklace that she nearly took Tidus’s head off for last year, when he thought it would be funny to play keep-away with it—until her hands finally get the clasp undone. Then she holds it out.

“I don’t have time to make you a good-luck charm, so… Take this.” She sounds very serious and a bit shy. She’s smiling, though. “So that you won’t forget us.”

Riku swallows as he reaches out and takes it. The only thing Kairi still has from before she came to the islands—all her friends know that—and she’s handing it to _him_.

“I—thanks, Kairi.”

He tries to get it on, but there’s a faint tremor in his hands, and his fingers keep slipping on the clasp.

She steps behind him. “Let me, butterfingers.” He starts to protest, but she tugs on his hair. With a wince, he shuts his mouth.

In moments, she has the clasp secure. “There we go.” He turns, and she grins at him. “Perfect,” she says.

Riku raises one hand, fingers just brushing the pearl pendant. “Yeah.”

“I wish you had something from Sora, too,” she says, a frown tugging at her mouth. “Now it’s going to bug me. I bet it’ll bother him, too.”

“Well… I _am_ leaving today, but I’ll be able to come back, eventually. If Sora wants me to have something, he’ll just have to wait for the next time we see each other.”

Kairi nods, grinning, a little sly. “I’ll make sure he knows.” What she’ll make sure Sora knows, Riku thinks, is that Riku has a keepsake from _her_ , because she’s _such_ a good friend that she couldn’t let Riku leave without one, so he’ll have something to remember how much she _values_ their friendship…

Just like Sora, Kairi can be an utter brat, and she’s slow to relinquish victories. She’ll be able to lord this over Sora for forever. Sora may even resort to hunting Riku down to give him something, just to get her to stop.

“I guess this is goodbye, then.”

“Not for forever. You’ll come back to visit. And if not, Sora and I will  _bring_ you back, you got that?” She leans forward, hands on her hips. “Hmmmm?”

He laughs, unintimidated. “Yeah.”

Satisfied, she straightens up and nods. “Good! I’ll tell Sora, okay? So don’t worry about that.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

Kairi smiles. “What else are friends for?”

“Thanks again.” He doesn’t just mean for telling Sora, or even the necklace.

Her smile softens. “Don’t mention it.”

An awkward silence. Riku shifts, resisting the urge to reach up and touch the necklace again. Kairi glances at it as well, echoing his thoughts.

“You’d better not lose that!” She glares at him. “Or else!”

“I’ll take good care of it.” His hand closes around the pendant. “I promise.”

A beat. He doesn’t think she’s hesitating out of doubt; he knows that it isn’t doubt that’s formed a lump in his own throat, choking out any other words he might say. She swallows, hard, and says, “Good. Take care of yourself too, okay? You have to be in one piece for Sora and I to find you.”

“I will,  _mom_ ,” he says with a grin. Then he sobers. “I might not be able to come back for a while, though. And I won’t be able to stay, when I do come back.”

Kairi meets his eyes and is quiet for a few heartbeats. “So this is it, then.” Before he can respond, she says, “I guess we should have expected you to leave first.”

Stung, he opens his mouth to protest.

“You’ve never liked sitting around here,” she steamrolls over him. “It gets worse every year. I kept thinking one day one of the big boats was going to go missing, and you with it, and no one would be surprised.”

“I wouldn’t leave without you and Sora.” He stops, swallows again. “I would stay now, if I could. Or bring you guys with me.”

“I know that.” Her hand joins his, over the pendant, over his heart. “Sora will, too, when I tell him. We understand. Just be careful. Come back to us, or stay safe somewhere we can find you, okay?”

That, he can agree to, and she hesitates for a few seconds before closing the miniscule distance between them and wrapping him in a hug. She and Sora are both brats, and they’re also both barnacles; she clings a lot more tightly than his mother did, and for even longer.

When he finally pries her off, her eyes are a little watery. His vision is a little blurred. They say goodbye one last time, and back away from each other. Finally, she darts forward to press a kiss to his cheek, then takes off running toward Sora’s house.

Riku’s uncle walks up behind him, lays a hand on his shoulder. “Just friends, hm?”

“Yeah, we are.” Riku scowls, and tries to shrug the hand off. The man’s hand refuses to be dislodged, though, and his whole face somehow communicates that Riku is in for a lot of teasing about this. So Riku turns on his heel and starts back toward home. He doesn’t care if the man _is_ his uncle; he really doesn’t want him to get all touchy-feely.

“Ah-ah, is that any way to treat your uncle, Riku?” His uncle easily catches up to him and matches his pace.

Riku doesn’t dignify the question with a response.

“Your mother would be disappointed.”

Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s not—Riku’s mom has always been his first and best ally, but she’s also always been very clear about how to treat people when they’re in the middle of doing you a favor. Riku makes a face.

His uncle seems content to let the conversation lie, and Riku needs a few yards to swallow back the first five things he wants to say, because his uncle _is_ going to be helping him, significantly.

“Kairi’s one of my oldest friends,” he settles on. “She and Sora are my best friends.”

“I see.” After a pause, the man volunteers, “In the village, ninja are placed into squads, usually of three, sometimes with a commander. The ability to work with a team is far more important than individual skill alone.”

That’s interesting enough that Riku turns to look at his uncle. “Really? I thought ninja would be all about solo missions.”

“Really. Solo missions happen, but they’re unusual. You yourself may even be placed into a team.” Another pause. “Of course, your teammates will most likely be younger than you. Most students start at the academy at six, and graduate at twelve. You’re a bit old to be starting.”

Oh, _lovely_. Riku’s going to be years behind everyone, in a place where everyone else will know each other and he’ll be the weird foreign kid. “Are you going to make me sit in classes with six year olds?” He eyes his uncle: he’s honestly not sure of the answer, and that makes him suspicious.

It does _not_ make him feel better when the man laughs. “We’ll see,” he says, in a way that somehow comes across as _if I can arrange it, absolutely yes_.

The rest of the walk to the house is quiet, though not awkwardly so.

When they get back, there are three packed duffels on the couch. Riku leads his uncle through the living room, into the kitchen; his bedroom door, immediately on his left, is wide open, and inside, his mother sits on his bed, framed picture in her lap.

Riku walks over to her and sees that it’s one from last summer. All the kids had made a gigantic sandcastle on the play island beach, and Kairi had wheedled her babysitter, Rinoa, into coming over and taking their picture. It was just before Rinoa had to leave, so there are some copies with Rinoa and some without. Riku had taken one, and Wakka, and there’s even one where they tried to set the timer. That was the last photo, because it had taken Riku, Rinoa, and Tidus to figure out the timer, and in their rush to get in the frame, they’d tumbled into one another and collapsed on top of the castle. Everyone’s face in that one is hilarious; the mayor has a copy on her desk in Town Hall.

This copy, though, has all the kids, no Rinoa. It’s the only photo Riku had wanted from the set; he never disliked Rinoa, but they were never close, either.

“I’m going to miss you,” there’s water on the glass of the frame, “ _so much_.”

All he can do is wrap an arm around his mother’s shoulders and tell her he loves her, he’s going to miss her too, he loves her _so much_. He thinks, if he asked her to come with him right now, she might even agree. He doesn’t ask.

She sniffles, wipes a hand over her face. Takes a deep breath. Then, she carefully places the picture in Riku’s backpack, sitting open next to her on the bed. There are a few more pictures and keepsakes already in it, and Riku’s closet looks ransacked.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to do it all.”

She sniffles again. “I lied. But you can finish up.” She gets up and leaves him and his uncle alone in his room.

There’s almost nothing else to pack, besides a few books he likes and one he hasn’t finished yet. After a moment’s thought, he adds a notebook and pencils and pens; even if he can’t come back anytime soon, it might be possible to send letters.

By then, his mother has recovered enough to stand in the doorway. She doesn’t look at Riku, though; he follows her gaze to his uncle, examining Riku’s desk, particularly the textbooks and homework.

Riku is _not_ taking any of that with him.

She glances at Riku, though her gaze slides quickly back to his uncle. “Did you find Kairi?”  
  
He nods, hand once again closing around the pendant. “Yeah, and I told her. She’ll tell Sora.”  
  
His mother doesn’t say anything about the necklace. She just asks, “Then you’re all ready to leave?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“I’m proud of you.” She comes over, and this time, it’s her arm around his shoulders, as she kisses his forehead. “You know that, right?”  
  
Shifting his weight, he nods. “Yeah, I know.”  
  
She’s smiling as she steps away. “Your bags are in the boat. I’d go with you, but there’s not enough room for three of us and the luggage.” That’s not remotely true, but he thinks he understands why she’s not going back to where she grew up, met his father, and left. He can accept it, anyway.  
  
“Thanks. For everything,” he says, turning red. “I—you’re the best, Mom. I love you.”  
  
He will not cry. He will not cry. He is not going to cry.  
  
She smiles. “I love you too.” She cups his cheek, thumb stroking just under his eye, so similar to earlier that morning. It feels wet.  
  
He’s not crying, though. He will not cry.  
  
“Are you ready?” his uncle asks, voice softer and more serious than Riku thought it could be.  
  
Riku nods, pulling away from his mother’s hand. “Yeah, let’s go.”


	2. Welcome to Konoha! The Bell Test, Revisited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku's first day in Konoha involves learning new customs, meeting a bunch of characters (cameos include Team 8 and the Hokage), going to the Academy, and being subjected to the bell test. (You didn't think Riku was going to get out of that one, did you?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to stick to an **update every Saturday** schedule; we'll see how long that lasts, since I'm about to get super busy, but I should have chapter 3 up next Saturday regardless.

Insanity, it turns out, is not _just_ a Hatake thing. Maybe all weird powers, magic included, come with it; maybe Riku’s family is just unusually unlucky.

Years of Christmas get-togethers and the occasional summer visit have not prepared him for his grandfather’s interception, bare minutes after Riku’s got the little boat docked and tied off.

“Take this,” and the old man hands over a blue cloth bundle, about as long as his forearm. No hello, no where-are-you-off-to, just _here you go_. “You might need it.”

Riku takes the bundle, heavier than he expects it to be, and unwraps it to reveal a leather-wrapped hilt with a nondescript pommel, followed by an equally nondescript dark leather sheath.

Every year, his grandmother sends him something from “Santa,” and every year since he turned eight, his thank-you note has pointed out that Santa doesn’t exist. He has only ever received utterly normal presents—clothes, shoes, school supplies. This…this is not normal.

He’s at a crossroads. Half of him thinks this is _the coolest thing ever_. He’s going to _ninja school_ , he’s going to learn all sorts of awesome things, he’s going to learn how to _fight_. The other half of him very distinctly remembers breaking Sora’s arm, and wants to thrust this knife and everything that it represents back into his grandfather’s hands.

Playing at being a knight, or a pirate, or a ninja was always just _fun_. It was never supposed to become real. Riku sort of resents that it has.

“Why?” he asks, instead of word-vomiting all of that at a man he has interacted with roughly a dozen times in his life. 

“I want you to have it.” His grandfather makes no secret of turning a narrow, suspicious gaze on his uncle. Kakashi Hatake, for his part, seems very absorbed in his book, and has been like that since he sat down in the boat and pulled it out. “I don’t trust that man. Take the knife, learn how to use it. If you have to, come back here.” His grandfather turns his attention back to Riku, boring into him with stormy grey eyes. “We’ll always have a safe place for you to come back to. Don’t worry about any of them on the other side; if you need to, just get back here, and we’ll take care of it.” 

That—sounds like a last resort. He’ll treat it as one, anyway. “All right. Thanks. I’ll…remember that.” 

And he swings his backpack off his shoulder, fully intending on stuffing the knife in there and forgetting about it, only his grandfather clears his throat and shoots another suspicious look at Kakashi. 

Riku raises his eyebrows and waits. Finally, his grandfather says, “If you don’t know how to put it on…” and leaves the offer to help unsaid.

Careful examination of the sheath in his hand reveals a loop where it can be attached to his belt. Riku lets his backpack his the dirt in order to first take off his belt, then put it back on, now going through the knife sheath as well. His grandfather nods in approval when he’s done, so he supposes that’s mission accomplished.

“Be careful,” are the old man’s parting words.  
  
“Thanks. I will,” are Riku’s.

///

They cross a bridge, and it feels like they’ve been walking across it for _days_ , although objectively it isn’t big enough to take longer than a couple minutes. Somewhere in the middle, the scenery around them starts to shift, so subtle that Riku might not notice it, except that the smell of seawater fades and is replaced by some sort of flowery scent, and that’s odd enough that it catches his attention. 

The trees are different. Riku studies them, pace slowing. Each step seems to replace palm trees with other kinds: thicker, taller, greener. Experimentally, he steps backwards, and the effect noticeably reverses. One tree _changes shape_ between one breath and the next.

Creepy. This whole bridge is _creepy_ , and Riku never thought about what _going to another world_ would actually entail. If Kairi did this at six, he has a lot more respect and admiration for her than he did, because he’s not sure he could have stomached it. There’s something just…off, about seeing the changes happen right in front of him.

He doubles his speed, catches up to his uncle, and by the time he looks around again, they’re across. Just like on the islands side, the bridge is over a river, one that looks utterly clear and deceptively still. Riku figures that the warning his mother gave him when he was nine and she showed it to him the first time still applies here, on the other side of the bridge: “more people have tried to swim in that river and died than you can even imagine. Don’t touch it, don’t go in it, and _do not_ try to swim across it. You will die, and we will never find your body.” 

When he turned eleven, he apparently earned the right to know that that had actually _happened_ , that he had an uncle on his mother’s side who he never met because of that river. Riku’s adventurous, sure, but he’s not _suicidally stupid_ , so he’s never tempted fate by going in the river and he’s not about to start now.

Near enough the river that it can’t be a coincidence is a weirdly-shaped building. It takes Riku a minute to register the solemn air, the identical clothes of the people walking through and outside it, the bells, and the faint scent of incense, but once all the information clicks together, he comes up with _temple_.

It doesn’t look like either of the temples he’s been in. Leviathan’s is styled after a beached longboat, only huge, and no one burns offerings inside because the whole thing is made of wood. If you really want to impress upon Leviathan the direness of your prayer for safety, you would light a bonfire outside the temple, wait for it to burn down, and then commit the ashes to the sea. Valefor’s, on the other hand, is all stone columns and stained glass in a dome shape, with plenty of open spaces to let the wind pass through the place. He’s gone to enough services with Sora and Kairi to know that people _do_ burn offerings and incense in there, but his primary sense-memory of the place is of thousands of wind chimes, wood and metal both, placed strategically throughout, so that a storm sounded different than a breeze, and you could tell which way the winds were blowing from what sounds you heard.

This temple is really unlike those, though Riku’s uncle leads him away from it, so he has no idea how different the inside is.

As they walk, Kakashi keeps shooting little glances at him, but every time Riku returns one, his uncle seems to be reading. While walking. Without walking _into_ anything. Finally, the man stops them, and gestures to Riku’s new knife.

“If you leave it like that,” he says, “it’s going to stab your femoral artery.” Arteries carry blood…away from the heart. Maybe. Or maybe that’s veins? “You’ll bleed out.” Oh. 

 _Oh shit_.

Riku has never stripped off a belt so fast. 

His uncle laughs at him. Not just a smile, or a chuckle: actual laughter. “Let me.” And then he slides Riku’s belt through the loops in his jeans and the sheath. When he’s done, it sits on his hip, and Kakashi adjusts it a little farther back. “There are better places to keep it, but for now, that should do.”

Walking is a little awkward—Riku’s not used to an unbalanced weight on his side, for all that the knife doesn’t weigh much—but he adjusts quickly. Carrying his backpack and two of the duffel bags is even more awkward, but his uncle already has one and Riku’s not about to ask him to take a second. He wouldn’t have relinquished the one Kakashi has, but Riku only has two hands, and Kakashi had picked it up before Riku could figure out how he was gonna get a handle on it.

They walk for what feels like hours (and, this time, it might actually objectively _be_ hours), surrounded by trees. Tall, thick trees, with the lowest boughs far above Riku’s head. The whole area smells like _vegetation_ , trees and rotting leaves, with the occasional hint of animals or flowers intruding. Riku’s pretty sure he could pick the scents apart better if they were more familiar, the way he can tell which part of the island a breeze came through, but it all just smells _green_ to him.

He doesn’t like it.

Every direction he looks in, he just sees more trees. There’s a path, at least, and he can tell that it’s an actual path because off to the sides, the underbrush is thick enough to sleep on. Riku really doesn’t want to find out what _does_ sleep on all that; pirate-stories have some frankly terrifying accounts of tall-as-a-house bears, and wolves big enough to eat a chocobo and have room for dessert. There could be _wyverns_ in there, or tree-ents, or _tonberries_.

Riku has won more than his fair share of Scary Story Nights with tonberry stories. He edges closer to Kakashi, just in case.

“Where are we going?” Riku asks, adjusting one of his bags so that it doesn’t cut into his shoulder, and quickens his pace to keep up with Kakashi.

“Konoha.” A beat. “It’s about two days’ walk east of here.”

Riku looks up, but the trees only let in enough sky that he can tell it’s daytime. He can’t even see the sun, let alone figure out which direction is  _east_  based on it.

“That’s the village you told me about?”

“Yes.” Kakashi looks at him, eye crinkling just a little. “You’ll know it when we’re close.”

///

 _Close_ is an understatement. Riku starts to see the wall long, long before before they get close. At first, he’s even not sure what it is, and Kakashi doesn’t help at all. It’s only when they’re close enough for Riku to identify the _equally huge gate doors_ that Riku understands what he’s looking at.

He stops walking. Kakashi pauses nearly as soon as he does, looking at Riku over his shoulder.

It’s a _wall_. They’re heading straight for it; that _has_ to be Konoha. It has a _wall around it_. 

That is so much worse than an ocean.

His uncle is watching him, and Riku makes himself take a deep breath. He agreed to come here to get training, and that hasn’t changed. He still needs it. 

Deep breaths. He can do this.

He hitches one duffel bag higher on his shoulder and resumes walking forward.

///

Konoha itself is _huge_. The gate, when they get to the foot of it, is easily bigger than any three houses Riku’s seen stacked on top of each other. The gate and the wall might even be taller than the tallest tree on the play island—and that tree didn’t wrap all the way around what is, really, far too big to be a village.

There are a couple other groups heading in—one group with a cart, another with overstuffed backpacks. Kakashi leads Riku over to where they’ve formed a line at a little stand and pulls out his book. Riku takes the time to look at the buildings: mostly, they’re all tall, two and three and four stories, with blue and red tile roofs, some yellow thatching, and a whole lot of open windows. The streets aren’t paved, but they’re clean, and there are trees in every direction Riku looks; some of the buildings look like they might have been built _around_ the trees, even.

As they’re waiting—it sounds like the people with the cart don’t quite have all their paperwork in order, and the people at the stand don’t sound happy about it—three kids, a small dog, and an adult come trudging up to the gate. They don’t stop or get in line.

Riku eyes them. They look about his age, and although none of them looked armed, they all have the same metal band that covers Kakashi’s eye. So does the adult, a woman with a weirdly-patterned dress and just one full-length red sleeve.

All of them look exhausted. Even the little dog is practically melting into the street. The two boys have bruised faces, while it looks like the girl took on something with claws. The woman has some cuts and bruises, but most noticeable are the large bags under her eyes.

She stops, a few feet away from Kakashi and Riku, looking first at one and then at the other. Kakashi keeps reading his book.

The kids and dog notice that the adult isn’t following them anymore and turn around, taking in the scene. Riku wishes Sora or Kairi were here; they’re both a lot better at making introductions (and friends) than he is on his own.

Still, Riku’s mother taught him not to be rude (unless the other person has done something to earn it), so he straightens his shoulders and extends a hand to the woman, who’s closest. “Hi. I’m Riku Hatake. Nice to meet you.” There. That’s polite, right?

The woman eyes his hand, brow furrowing, for a long moment. Then she gingerly takes it; she seems a little surprised when he shakes it, but returns the handshake. She looks as relieved as he feels when he lets go.

“Yūhi Kurenai,” she says, and glances at his uncle. “Riku Hatake?”

Kakashi doesn’t look up from his book. “That is what he said.” 

There’s something that Riku’s missing, but he doesn’t have long to puzzle over it before Yūhi gives his uncle a look of clear disgust and turns to face Riku. “Hatake is your family name, correct?” At his nod, she says, “Here in Konoha, when you introduce yourself, you begin with the family name. And typically, we bow.” She demonstrates, back straight, arms at her side, face down, before straightening quickly.

That…is weird. Riku stares at her for a long moment, not sure if he actually believes that—but then he remembers that Kakashi had introduced himself as _Hatake Kakashi_ , and had called him _Hatake Riku_ before being corrected. And if the name thing is right, he can probably trust her about the bowing, too.

“So, Hatake Riku,” she goes on, “it’s nice to meet you.”

“I didn’t know Naruto’s jounin teacher had a kid,” one of the kids, a boy with two red triangles on his face, says. “And who doesn’t know how to _introduce_ themselves?”

“K-Kiba!” The only girl in the group seems nervous, but doesn’t back down when the first boy swings his head around to look at her. “That’s rude. I’m sure… I’m sure there’s a reason.”

Riku doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with shy girls—there are ( _were_ , now, since he’s never going back to that school) a couple in his class, but they don’t tend to hang out with Riku’s group. He has _lots_ of experience with loud, occasionally rude boys. 

He bypasses “Kiba” and stops a foot away from the girl, bowing the way Kurenai did. “I’m Hatake Riku. What’s your name?” 

She bows back; it doesn’t quite hide how red her face is. “H-Hyuuga Hinata. It’s nice to meet you, Riku.”

“You too.” 

Next to her, the boy who’s been quiet so far also bows. “Aburame Shino.”

Kiba scoffs at them, but Riku ignores him for a second. He glances at the line—the cart’s been pulled back through the gate, the people with it looking furious, and now there’s just one group between his uncle and that stand—and then he turns his attention to Kiba.

“Kakashi’s not my dad,” he says, “he’s my uncle.”

That gets some confusion from not just the kids but also Kurenai. She hides it a lot quicker, but Riku’s looking for her reaction. 

Face blank, Kurenai asks, “You grew up outside the village?” 

Riku’s saved from answering by his uncle calling his name. Riku jogs over, and gets to the desk in time to hear Kakashi tell the men sitting behind it that he’s Kakashi’s nephew.

Much like the others, the two men look shocked. “You have a _nephew_?” one asks.

“That’s right.” Kakashi’s palm between Riku’s shoulder blades pushes him almost into the desk. Riku looks at him suspiciously; he didn’t see the man move at all, plus the book is still out. How did his uncle _do_ that? “Hatake Riku. The Hokage already knows.”

The second one whistles. “You don’t waste any time, do you? I bet he’s already registered and everything…” Kakashi’s eye crinkles at that. “Well, then, this is just a formality, but you need to sign these…”

He hands Kakashi some paperwork, and his uncle signs way too many forms. Once that’s done, Kakashi starts walking into Konoha. He doesn’t so much as glance at Riku. 

Kurenai and the kids are gone by the time all that is done; they looked beat, so hopefully they’re off getting patched up and tucked in.

At first, Riku figures they’re heading for his uncle’s house, but he rules that out when Kakashi leads him past all the buildings and into a less-developed area. It reminds Riku a bit of the play island, actually. There’s even a river, which means that he can  _swim_.

Intent on gauging how deep the river is and how fast its current is likely to be, Riku doesn’t even notice his uncle stopping until he runs into Kakashi’s back. His uncle turns to shoot him a look over his shoulder, although in amusement or irritation, Riku can’t quite tell. He’s never really thought about how much a person’s face gives away about their emotions until now, when Kakashi’s mask makes it nearly impossible to tell how he feels about anything. Come to think of it, that’s probably why all the ninja in movies and shows cover their whole faces, except for the eyes.  
  
It sounded cool as a Halloween costume, but in real life, it’s sort of creepy.  
  
There’s someone else waiting for them next to the river, and Kakashi indicates the man with a wave of a hand. “This is the Hokage. He leads the village.”  
  
This Hokage looks even older than Sora’s aunt, who needed to be carried everywhere because her legs were too weak, until one day she just couldn’t wake up anymore. Riku wonders if the same thing will happen with Hokage, or if he’s still a ninja. Do ninjas live longer than other people? Can old people even  _be_ ninjas, or would creaky joints and old-people-breath give them away? Come to think of it, Kakashi said this guy _leads_ the village—does that automatically make him a ninja, or does it mean he can’t be one at all?

Kairi’s mom is the mayor of their little town, and there’s so much paperwork that she barely makes it to Parent Night and Kairi’s school performances. Riku can imagine just how much more paperwork a place _this_ huge would produce; there’s no way anyone could do that _and_ anything else. So maybe it’s better if he’s not a ninja after all.  
  
“So this is your nephew?” Hokage asks. Kakashi nods and ruffles Riku’s hair. Riku scowls at him and smooths it back down, moving sideways out of Kakashi’s reach.  
  
A commotion off to the side pulls Riku’s attention and he turns; Kakashi and Hokage don’t so much as glance over. Instead, they’re talking about him, but all the stuff about chakra, types, remedial lessons, knives, and clones sounds complicated and intimidating. He should probably pay attention, but since he doesn’t recognize half the words anyway—and the other half don’t really make much sense, either—he figures it doesn’t matter all that much. If he needs to know something, he can ask about it later.  
  
The commotion is something orange and yellow and wet, and swearing loudly. Slowly, it pulls itself out of the river, revealing a kid about his age. He raises his eyebrows; it isn’t that no one on the islands cussed, but none of the kids his age did, and they certainly didn’t cuss in front of the adults.  
  
Without looking over at the kid, Kakashi says, “Language, Naruto.”  
  
He looks more like a Tidus to Riku.  
  
The boy, Naruto, flips Kakashi off before trudging over to a pair of kids, a boy and a girl. Riku blinks, and then stares.  
  
That girl has pink hair.  
  
Pink. Hair.  _Cotton candy_ pink hair, too.  
  
The second boy is pretty unremarkable, next to cotton-candy hair and the one in orange. At thirteen, Riku is no stranger to hair gel, or even natural spikes like Sora’s. The second boy’s could be either.  
  
The girl and the boy don’t look like they’re doing anything until the soaking wet Naruto walks over and drapes himself on the other boy.  
  
He gets shoved off, rougher than Riku would have shoved Sora. (Sora would have clung to him, though, limpet-like, until he got bored enough to let go on his own.) Naruto doesn’t reattach himself; instead, he walks over to the girl and whines at her. Riku can’t hear the words, but he can make out the tone. This Naruto even _sounds_ like a Tidus.  
  
“Ah, I see you’ve found my team,” Kakashi says. “What do you think?”  
  
“Naruto reminds me of a guy I know.”  
  
“That’s all?” Kakashi sounds disappointed.  
  
Riku bristles. What, he’s supposed to automatically like them or something? Or is this some sort of secret test, and he’s supposed to tell Kakashi all sorts of things that he’s managed to figure out about these kids?  
  
…Is he going to flunk his first ninja test?  
  
“The other guy and Naruto don’t seem to get along,” he adds, watching Kakashi. The man nods. “I don’t know about the girl.” He glances back at the three. Naruto is still next to her, still whining, but she isn’t paying any attention to him. “Those two, they’re not friends with Naruto, are they?”  
  
“And what makes you say that?”  
  
Riku frowns. “They seemed to be fine before he walked over, and now they’re not talking to him. That’s not how friends act.” Friends grab a towel for each other when they’re wet, and stop what they’re doing to chat—or chat while they keep working, if they have to. They don’t just  _ignore_  each other. He’s starting to feel a bit bad for Naruto, even with all the whining.  
  
“Hmm. Interesting.” Kakashi nods, and then steps away from Riku. He calls the three over and smiles when the kids glare at him.  
  
Riku doesn’t approach the new group yet, waiting for some signal from his uncle. Naruto immediately starts whining at Kakashi, something about being bored and leaving on secret missions. Kakashi doesn’t seem to care, and turns to Riku mid-rant, motions him over.  
  
“I’d like you three to meet someone,” he says when Riku cautiously steps forward, laying a hand on Riku’s shoulder. “This is my nephew, Riku. Riku, this is my team.”  
  
The girl steps forward; Riku half-expects her to raise her hand as if she’s in class. “Um, it’s nice to meet you and all, but…shouldn’t we be training?” She glances over to the side; Riku follows her gaze to Hokage.  
  
They were working on something—well, okay, Naruto was taking a dip in the river and the other two were silently staring at each other—when Kakashi and Riku showed up. Is this really how ninjas train?  
  
Kakashi smiles, eye crinkling but not closed all the way, at the dark-haired boy. Riku looks at him, too, and catches a glare. He frowns. He doesn’t even _know_ this kid; he doesn’t even know his _name_. Why’s he getting glared at? Is it because Riku interrupted his staring contest with the girl?  
  
Maybe staring at each other is some super-special ninja technique. Or worse, maybe staring at each other is some kind of super-weird ninja _flirting_. Maybe mutual, silent staring is the ninja version of holding hands? At least that makes sense, that the boy is irritated that Riku interrupted his ninja-hand-holding time with Cotton Candy Hair.  
  
Some of Riku’s thoughts must cross his face, because the boy stops glaring, expression going blank, and raises an eyebrow at him.  
  
“That’s true,” Kakashi says, and it takes Riku a few seconds to remember that the girl asked about training—for one spine-chilling moment, he thinks his uncle is _actually psychic_. Kakashi pulls his hand away from Riku’s shoulder, but only so that he can pat the top of Riku’s head, pulling Riku’s gaze away from the dark-haired boy and onto the offending hand. “I suppose I should explain. Hmm.”

He tilts his head up, as if it takes a whole lot of thought to put the situation into words. He even taps his chin with his free hand, which is overacted enough that even Riku knows it’s fake. “Riku’s mother asked me to make him a ninja. However, he’s had no training, and it wouldn’t be nice to send him to the Academy at his age.” Naruto snickers and Riku scowls at him. “Besides, he’s had some other training that will hopefully make up for it.”

Kakashi ignores the byplay, but his gaze is sharp on them when he says, “Also, it’s my hope that he can work with this team. Think of yourselves as mentors, guiding him on his way to ninjahood.” That had to come from someone else; it doesn’t sound like Kakashi, and Hokage has a sudden coughing fit, suspiciously similar to laughter. “Naturally, you will be working with him a lot in the future, individually and as a team.”  
  
Patting Riku’s head one last time, Kakashi finishes, “So, as a way of getting to know each other, and to evaluate Riku’s skills as a ninja, let’s have a little test.” His eye is totally closed, with definite laugh-lines on the side. Riku tenses up. Never before has the word “test” conjured up such a strong sense of dread. “This test will also help me evaluate your progress.”  
  
Riku glances at the three kids, hoping for some hint about what his uncle is going on about now. Instead, Naruto looks constipated, the girl’s brows are furrowed, and the other boy simply stares at Kakashi.  
  
All of them are as confused as he is, except maybe the dark-haired boy; Riku has trouble reading him when he isn’t outright glaring.

“Kakashi?” the girl finally asks.  
  
“Yes, Sakura?”  
  
Sakura is the girl’s name. Riku will have to remember that. What kind of ninja has  _pink_  hair? Aren’t ninjas supposed to be about sneaking up on people, and stealing secrets, and stuff like that?

Then again, Kakashi said ninjas go on group missions more than solo missions, going against everything Riku knew. How much _else_ of what he thinks he knows will turn out to be wrong?  
  
“What’s the test?”  
  
“One you’re already familiar with. Here, Riku,” and he thrusts something in front of Riku’s nose. Riku grabs it before he even sees what it is; the bells clink together in his palm. “I suppose a five-minute head start would be fair.”  
  
“What?” Riku asks.  
  
“You have five minutes.”  
  
Riku scowls. “I  _got_  that part, thanks. To do what?”  
  
“To run away, of course.” Kakashi nods to the kids. “They’re going to try to take those bells from you.”  
  
Riku stares at him, then at the kids.  
  
The dark-haired boy has pulled out a knife, much smaller than the one on Riku’s hip. He stares back at Riku.  
  
The girl—Sakura—nods and pulls her own knife out.  
  
Naruto outright  _laughs_. Then he says, “He’s gonna need more than five minutes to get away from  _us_!”  
  
Kakashi tilts his head. “Maybe you’re right. I suppose ten would be better. And perhaps a time limit…let’s say, until sundown? If he can keep away from you for that long, he wins.”  
  
Sakura whips her head around to glare at Naruto; Riku can’t hear what she says to him, but he does hear the loud smack of her palm against his head. The other boy also glares at Naruto, though at least he doesn’t hit him.  
  
Riku drops the two duffels and his backpack. If this is a test, hopefully his uncle doesn’t expect him to get away from these kids while weighed down with all his luggage.  
  
Hopefully.  
  
After a moment of thought, he shoves the bells into his pocket, where he won’t drop them and they won’t make much noise.  
  
Then he looks back at the kids. They stare at him, expressions serious—except, again, for Naruto, who has his hands behind his head and rolls his eyes at Riku.  
  
Riku makes a face at that. He’s the best runner on the islands, and the best tree-climber and swimmer. Maybe, in a couple of years, Sora  _might_ be a threat to those titles (only because he’s part-monkey), but for now, Riku is uncontested. The best.  
  
Time to show these kids that.  
  
He takes off down the road, back toward the gate. He could’ve jumped into the river, but if he has to get out, his clothes will be soaked and slow him down. Besides, he doesn’t know how deep or strong it is, or where it goes. After his mother’s dire warnings about the river he crossed to get here, he doesn’t really want to take any chances. He really doesn’t want to think about what his mother would do if Kakashi had to tell her that Riku drowned in a  _river_  before he even started learning how to be a ninja. He’s not going to rule it out as a last resort if he has to come back later, though; after all, he saw Naruto climb out of the river earlier, so it’s probably not a death-river like the one his mother warned him about.  
  
He’ll keep it as a last resort, though, just in case.

So instead, he runs down the road. He hits a crossroads and, figuring that Kakashi can find him if he gets himself  _too_ lost, goes left. There are more people that way, and maybe he can get lost in the crowd.  
  
Any two blocks he passes probably have the same amount of people as Riku’s home island. Most of the people have those metal plates with the Konoha symbol, and they give him a bit too much personal space for what he needs.  
  
He doesn’t even try to keep track of which direction he takes; instead, he focuses on keeping his legs moving and not crashing into anybody.  
  
There are an awful lot of trees. Some of them _do_ have buildings like huge tree-houses attached to them, with winding staircases built around the trunks to get up, and ladder-like bridges strung between them. It looks more like a page out of an adventure picture-book than a place where real people live, and Riku doesn’t dare try to leave ground level. If he goes up, he’ll probably dead-end on top of somebody’s house.  
  
He passes the same building twice—the smell clues him in, since he skipped out on breakfast and the scent of cooking meat makes his mouth water—so he turns left at the next corner. He’s pretty sure last time he went right. Maybe.

As he turns the corner, Riku runs straight into the dark-haired boy. Both fall; Riku was moving faster, so he ends up on top, with the other boy flat on his back underneath.  
  
A moment later, though, he’s trying to wrestle Riku onto  _his_  back, one hand going for Riku’s pocket at the same time. Riku grabs that wrist.  
  
Without missing a beat, the ninja’s  _other_  hand dives for Riku’s pocket. It’s an awkward stretch, though, and Riku just shifts, pulling back and up so the pocket is out of range.  
  
The boy tries to yank his captured wrist free, with enough strength that Riku immediately realizes he can’t hold on for long. Instead, he uses his free hand to grab the ninja’s headband and yank it over his eyes. As soon as the boy is blinded, Riku lurches off him and takes off in the more crowded direction, hoping to slow his pursuit down.  
  
He isn’t even a block away before he spots yellow hair. He freezes for a second before he registers it’s a girl, not Naruto. Nevertheless, he moves off that street at the next crossroad, but after no more than a minute of jogging, he stops.  
  
There’s a building with open doors, some sort of symbol hanging above them.  
  
Riku smirks and runs through the doors. Kakashi didn’t say he couldn’t hide out inside a building, and if he’s lucky, the ninja-kids will assume he’ll just keep to the streets.  
  
He realizes it’s a school when he comes to the first classroom. It’s  _huge_  compared to the school at home, which had enough classrooms for kids from several of the nearby islands.  
  
Riku counts that many classrooms  _in this hall_ , and when he peeks in an open door,  _one_  of those classrooms is easily as big as any two or three back home.  
  
“Excuse me, young man. What are you doing here?”  
  
Riku jumps at the unexpected voice behind him; he whirls around and prepares to run before he has time to think. Then he makes himself relax.  
  
The man in front of him looks a little older than Rinoa, maybe about Kakashi’s age. A large scar across his nose and a metal plate on his forehead mark him as another ninja.  
  
Behind the man, a few kids peer out from the cover of the doorway.  
  
Riku smiles and, as politely as he can manage, “I’m, ah, sort of being tested. I think.”  
  
The man frowns. “What sort of test is it? I haven’t been told, and if you’re running around the academy for a test, I should have been.”  
  
Riku shifts. While part of him would  _love_  to throw Kakashi to the sharks, he  _is_  still Riku’s uncle. Probably also spying on Riku right now, too, come to think of it.  
  
Resisting the urge to look around frantically, he answers, “It’s like a pop quiz.” Or hide-and-seek, but he doesn’t think that comparison will help him much in this conversation.  
  
The man’s frown deepens, and Riku winces and glances over the man’s shoulder. He can see out the front door, which means he can _be seen from_ outside, and if any of the three kids walk by…

“Who gave you the test?”  
  
“My uncle,” Riku answers without thinking. Another wince; so much for not throwing Kakashi to the sharks. Oh well. If Kakashi calls him on it, he’ll just say he was returning the favor.  
  
“Does your uncle have a name?” the man asks, sounding…like a teacher running out of patience with a student’s story.  
  
Riku blinks at the man for a long moment, then mentally shakes himself. “Oh! Oh, sorry, uh, yeah. He does.” The man chuckles, but not unkindly, and Riku smiles. “He’s Kakashi Hatake. Or, uh, Hatake Kakashi, I guess.” Oh god, does he  _have_  to trip over his words? He hopes Kakashi  _isn’t_ watching.  
  
The man in front of him stares. “I didn’t know Hatake had any family.” Then _he_ looks like he’s mentally shaking himself. “And he’s testing you?” The man sighs and shakes his head. “He’s called a genius, so I suppose I shouldn’t question his methods… What about his team, though?”  
  
“He’s testing them, too.” At the man’s raised eyebrows, Riku explains: “They’re chasing me. If I can keep away from them ‘til sunset, I win. If they catch me, they do.”  
  
“And he told you to do this in the academy?” Now the man’s back to frowning, though also glancing around this time.  
  
“Not exactly. He didn’t say where, so I just started running and wound up here.”  
  
The man stares at him for several seconds, crossing his arms over his chest. “I have an idea. Come with me.”

Riku follows him into a classroom full of small children. They’re about big enough to paddle their own boats, but not big enough to go anywhere they want without supervision; anywhere between seven and ten, Riku estimates.

“Class, we’re putting the lesson on pause.” Cheers, and the man just sighs. Riku doesn’t know what he expected, honestly; even _interesting_ lessons are way less exciting than anything that suddenly interrupts them. “One of the jounin in the village has given his team a mission to track down Hatake.” He gestures to Riku, and Riku decides that he might as well try to be polite. He bows, and a couple of the kids giggle. _Brats_. “Now, Hatake here is new to the village…” The teacher trails off, frowning, as if Riku might correct this assumption.

Instead, Riku nods. He _is_ new. And if this is going where he thinks it’s going, he’s _really glad_ he came in here.

“—Which isn’t very fair to him, when the jounin’s team all know the village pretty well.” A couple of kids agree loudly with this statement, booing the unfair jounin and his cheating team. “So, what do you all think about evening the field? Or, I suppose, we could go back to the lesson…”

The class practically choruses in unison that they’ll help Riku.

In short order, Riku finds himself in possession of a map with marked hiding spots and a small collection of keys. (The teacher forbids them from giving him their own house keys; a few of the students wink as they slip him keys while the teacher’s back is turned, all of them marking doors on the map  and the keys themselves with matching colors.) A trio of girls pull out and attach a black-haired wig to Riku’s head, while another little girl coughs up a pair of sunglasses.

The kids try to convince their teacher to swap outfits with him, and fail. One enterprising little boy instead suggests asking an older student to switch, and gets permission to go to another room and ask. He returns with a faded green shirt, black shorts, and a wide grin.

Some boys carefully demonstrate how to trigger a smoke bomb, and from the dirty look the teacher gives the small supply they hand him, they’re not supposed to have them. They also try to hand him wire, which he refuses on the grounds that if he can’t use it quickly, it’ll just slow him down.

“You don’t know how to use ninja-wire?” one little girl—the same one whose sunglasses he’s wearing—asks, tone unreadable. “But you’re _old_!”

Riku rolls his eyes at her. “Yeah, well, I didn’t learn it in school like you are. I learned different things.”

The kids want to know _what_ he learned, but then the boy posted at the window says, “There’s genin coming! It’s Uzumaki and Uchiha!” 

There’s some immediate whispering, most of which Riku doesn’t catch. One boy tugs on his pants. “Are _they_ the ones chasing you?”

Riku looks at him blankly, then at the teacher. The teacher nods. “Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura are Hatake Kakashi’s genin team.”

So the dark-haired boy must be Sasuke, then.

The class goes quiet at this revelation, before excitement seems to take hold of them. “We can _prank Uzumaki_ ,” Riku hears from more than one child.

He’s very quickly ushered into the bathroom, with a gang of four boys standing guard while he changes. (He takes the opportunity to move the bells from his pocket to his necklace, knotting the cord around the chain. This way, they’re hidden under his shirt, though hopefully he can keep them from making too much noise.) When he finishes and comes out, all of them, with a weird gesture and a puff of smoke, turn into a mirror copies of Riku. 

They follow him part of the way through the building—not toward the front door, but on a circuitous path _through_ the school. One peels off to go upstairs; another darts through the front door when they pass it.

That one evidently encounters Naruto and Sasuke; he shouts, loudly, and that’s Riku’s cue to hightail it back to the classroom.

He walks into a sea of identical faces. He is going to have _nightmares_ about this.

Leaving his clothes with the teacher, he makes for the window. “Wait!” Riku turns back to the teacher. “My former students know the village well, and the academy even better. You should go to the training grounds; they haven’t had access to most of those.”

“Thanks.”

“Hurry!” the man says, and laughs.

Riku throws himself through the window and dashes off.

Based on the map in his new pocket, there’s a training ground pretty close by. If his left shoulder faces the rock wall, then the training ground is ahead of him, and there’s only one place he’ll have to skirt around, based on the large red X one kid drew over that area. (It’s not the only red X, but Riku didn’t have time to ask about those.)

He has to pull up abruptly and change plans when _two Narutos_ are posted at the crossroads three blocks up, examining everyone who passes by. Riku’s only saving grace is that Naruto isn’t very observant and hasn’t bothered to check beyond his immediate vicinity. (Their vicinity? Is one real and one fake, or does Naruto have a twin? Or is this ninja magic? Will _Riku_ be able to do that one day?) Riku’s safe for the moment, but it won’t last.

He tucks himself into a stoop and pulls out the map. This time, he doesn’t look for the nearest training ground; instead, he looks for ones near the river. There are three, and Riku notes the direction he’ll need to go in and tries to commit the turns he’ll need to take to memory.

In all likelihood, he won’t remember _exactly_ which way to go, but he should be able to get there.  
  
The sun is noticeably dipping toward the horizon by the time Riku finds the river, and he’s had seven or eight more close calls, give or take the time he almost runs into Naruto like he had Sasuke—only the fact that Naruto was loudly asking someone if they’d seen a guy with grey hair saved Riku, but he manages to sneak away without the kid noticing, so he thinks it might count for half.

Before going in, he makes sure the bells are secure and his knife is safely on his hip, where it won’t stab his femoral artery and kill him.  
  
Then he dives into the water.  
  
It’s colder than he expects, and the current slower—though it’s stronger than it seemed from the riverbank. After a moment’s thought, he lets the current pull him downriver, ducking his head under the water when the treeline on either side breaks.  
  
A few times, he thinks he sees something out of the corner of his eye—movement, not even color—but when he looks, it’s gone. A glance around shows him that the area is (seemingly) deserted, so he keeps going.  
  
It takes him longer than he expected to reach the training ground he started in. He pants as he pulls himself out of the water. His hair sticks to his face and clumps in front of his eyes, and his borrowed shirt and shorts are incredibly uncomfortable. It’s sunny out, but not nearly as hot as home, so who knows how long it’ll take to dry out.  
  
Riku starts to explore, keeping within sight of the river. Maybe it’s silly and wrong, but he’s an Islander, and swimming is in his blood. In an emergency, he can dive for the safety of the water and hope that he can outswim the kids until the sun goes down. Still, he feels a bit vulnerable, standing around waiting for some kids to jump him, so he climbs up a tree, figuring that height might be an advantage. The river ought to be deep enough to make it a safe landing, too.

Once he’s up, he finds that the branches are thick enough to support his weight, and there’s even more of them higher up. He doesn’t risk going in that direction, though, and instead practices leaping from one branch to the next. His pulse kicks up and his breath comes in fast, but it’s bearable if he thinks of it not as jumping from one branch to another, but as jumping over a missing plank in a bridge.

And then, of course, he misses, and he’s not over the water when he does it. Dirt and shrubs, it turns out, are much worse to land on than sand.  
  
“Ow…” He rubs his knees and shins, wincing at the way they sting. Normally, his pants would cushion him from that. He can’t remember the last time he actually skinned his knees. They aren’t bleeding too badly, at least, though he’ll probably have bruises. “That was stupid.”  
  
“You’re not from around here, are you?”  
  
Riku spins around. Cotton Candy Hair—no, wait, _Sakura_ —stands nearby. There’s basically no chance that she _didn’t_ see his spectacular wipeout.  
  
“Uh…yeah, I’m not.” He doesn’t bother to elaborate, and follows the answer with a question of his own. “I guess I have to fight you too?”  
  
Sakura shakes her head. Riku notices that she doesn’t have the knife she had pulled out earlier.  
  
“No. I’d probably lose. My teammates are a lot stronger than I am,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder and stepping a little closer to Riku.  
  
“So…you’re not going to try?” He edges back, until he’s leaning against the trunk of a tree.  
  
Sakura shakes her head again, and then suddenly she’s a lot closer than she was before, with tears in her eyes and her bottom lip stuck out in a pout.  
  
“I can’t do anything right,” she says, voice hitching in a sob, one hand raised to brush tears off her face. The other clenches at her side and trembles slightly. “I can’t fight by myself. I always need Sasuke or someone else to help me…”  
  
Riku shifts awkwardly, not very good at dealing with crying girls. Kairi hardly ever cried. Selphie did, but Riku didn’t hang around her as much. He has no idea what to do for Sakura; the only experience he has with comforting criers comes from Sora, who he’d hug or sit close next to until it stopped. But Sakura’s a stranger and he didn’t really hug his  _friends_  all that much, let alone people he’s barely met.  
  
A moment later, he regrets his indecision and confusion when he feels one of her hands press into his pocket. He immediately tries to step away from her, but the hand in his pocket darts up to grasp his wrist, which she pins to the trunk so he can’t escape. Her free hand searches his other pocket.

“Hey, get off—” He tries to push her away and tug his captured hand free at the same time, and fails to do either. Instead, when she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she starts eyeing him up and down, her empty hand frisking his borrowed shorts and then his waist shamelessly.

The wet fabric of his shirt doesn’t do much to hide the bells underneath, and it only takes Sakura another fifteen or so seconds of examination before she makes a triumphant noise.

He recovers enough to meet her hand with his own, and she doesn’t let him escape to side, but _he_ doesn’t let _her_ get at the necklace. This goes on for an embarrassingly long time, though he’s not sure who it’s more embarrassing for: him, since she’s about an inch shorter and twenty pounds lighter than him, or her, since he’s totally untrained.

Eventually, though, she apparently gives up on decorum and headbutts him. While he tries to recover from _that_ , she yanks his necklace out of his shirt. The knot stymies her for all of ten seconds before she pulls out her knife, cuts through the knot, and collects the bells, all in what seems like one smooth motion.

He makes a grab for them, but she lets him go and darts away.  
  
“Gotcha!” she says, smiling and poking her tongue out at Riku as she holds up her prize before taking off.  
  
Scowling, Riku chases her. Her bright red dress is easy enough to follow—until she runs  _straight up a tree_ and starts jumping.  
  
Straight. Up. A.  _Tree_. She doesn’t _climb_ , she  _runs_ , as if it’s a hill. If Riku isn’t so shocked, he might be able to grab her dress and yank her back down to the ground.  
  
As it is, he’s left staring, wondering if he actually saw that. If  _that’s_ one of the things he’s supposed to learn in ninja school, then he’s screwed. Maybe there’s a remedial ninja-studies class he can take. Didn’t Hokage and Kakashi say something about remedial lessons?

Or maybe the class that helped him earlier will take pity on him and let him sit in on their lessons without giving him grief.  
  
Right on the heels of that thought comes another, more urgent one:  
  
_What the—?!_  
  
He manages to jump to the side and avoid the loud blast and sudden plume of smoke. It doesn’t save him from getting a knee to the gut, though.  
  
Sasuke doesn’t seem angry, despite trying to plant his fist in Riku’s face. The neutral expression turns to irritation when Riku scrambles backward to dodge the blow. Then Riku can’t see his face, because an orange blob captures all of his attention.  
  
Naruto is easier to dodge, but after the first punch flies by Riku’s nose, Naruto multiplies. What started as a two-on-one fight becomes even more weighted when the whole area explodes into orange and yellow.  
  
“Give us the bells and no one gets hurt,” the Narutos demand in unison, puffing out their chests, pumping their biceps, and brandishing their fists at Riku.  
  
Riku frowns. “I don’t have them.”  
  
“Do you think we’re idiots?” Sasuke asks, rolling his eyes.  
  
Riku grits his teeth and swallows his pride. He’d rather be embarrassed than take on about a hundred Narutos. And Sasuke.  
  
“I just lost them, right before you showed up. The girl,” he pauses, then remembers and corrects, “Sakura, she took them.”  
  
Sasuke eyes him skeptically. Naruto doesn’t even bother; the three nearest Riku grab him while the one next to Sasuke walks over and shoves a hand in his pocket.  
  
“Hey, don’t—!” Riku snarls as he elbows the nearby face of one of the Narutos. It pops and Riku stops, startled out of his anger.  
  
Naruto, seemingly unconcerned about the sudden disappearance of one of the copies, pulls his hand out, then checks the other front pocket. Riku knees him in the groin and he disappears as well. A fifth one steps up to pat him down, eyeing the necklace suspiciously but giving up on it when Riku makes a serious bid to _bite his face off_.  
  
When Riku glances over, Sasuke has an eyebrow raised at him, as if to say, “What’s the point? You’re just wasting your time.” Riku glares back at him as Naruto steps back and shakes his head.  
  
“Either he’s telling the truth, or he shoved them down his boxers.” Naruto crosses his arms over his chest. “I am  _not_ checking there.”  
  
Sasuke glares back at him. “If a captive has the information you need—”  
  
“Then  _you_  check him, asshole! I’m the one doing all the work here!”  
  
Sasuke opens his mouth, then shuts it. He squares his shoulders. His glare never goes away. “Fine,” he says, and stomps over to Riku.  
  
Riku tries to edge away,  _very_ uncomfortable with the situation. There are hands on his arms, pressed against his shoulder blades, and gripping his shoulders, though; he can’t go anywhere, held securely in place.  
  
“As titillating as this is, that won’t be necessary.”  
  
He will never, ever be so relieved to hear his uncle’s voice.  
  
Almost instantly, all the Narutos disappear. Riku thinks he sees a flash of metal, but he isn’t sure. Then Kakashi is behind him, hand on his head and ruffling his still-wet hair.  
  
Sakura lands between them and the boys. She offers the bells to Kakashi.  
  
Kakashi smiles and takes them with his free hand. “Good work, although next time, arrange a plan with your teammates  _before_  engaging the enemy. They can’t help you if they don’t know where you are or what you’re about to do.”  
  
Sakura flushes pink, not quite matching her hair, then nods jerkily.  
  
“You’re dismissed.”  
  
She hesitates, glancing at the boys. Kakashi coughs pointedly and, with one more brief pause, Sakura leaves.  
  
Naruto and Sasuke look nervous. Sasuke is tense—and if _Riku_ can tell, it must be bad—and Naruto keeps shifting his weight, from foot to foot and from the balls of his feet to his heels. The movements aren’t large, but they are distracting, and after a few seconds, Sasuke grabs his elbow.  
  
“Stop,” he orders.  
  
Naruto scowls and yanks his elbow out of Sasuke’s grip. “Make me.”  
  
“Can they get along at  _all_?” Riku asks. He only intends for his uncle to hear it, but it comes out louder than he expects.   
  
Sasuke and Naruto both turn to him, both frowning, though their expressions are remarkably different. Naruto’s is more of a pout, while Sasuke’s is only a slight downward curve of his lips.   
  
“Occasionally,” Kakashi says. Then he looks away from Riku, toward his students. “It was good that the two of you did work together. Had you done it sooner, you might have passed.”  
  
Naruto immediately starts to protest that it isn’t fair and he and Sasuke working together at  _all_ means that they should pass, because apparently the test was really about teamwork, not getting the bells. If Riku knew _that_ when they started, he would have thrown them into the river and let the ninjas swim for them.  
  
Kakashi looks at Sasuke. “No comments?”  
  
Sasuke shakes his head. “We were assigned a mission. We failed.” He pauses. “Our teammate completed the mission.”  
  
“She did. She spent most of her time looking for the two of you.”  
  
Sasuke doesn’t react to that, though Naruto does. He looks guilty, then happy.  
  
“Sakura came looking for me? Really?!”  
  
Sasuke snorts. “ _Us_ , moron.”  
  
Naruto scowls at him. This seems to be his normal expression around Sasuke. Riku can understand why Kakashi would quiz them on their teamwork.  
  
“So!” Kakashi says brightly, interrupting the budding argument. “As punishment for failing, the two of you are going to be assisting the chuunin instructors at the Academy.” He smiles, eye closing completely; he practically  _radiates_  glee. “Next week is knife and throwing-star practice. You’ll be on duty collecting the practice weapons as they hit the ground.”  
  
Even Sasuke blanches at that. Naruto turns so white, Riku wonders if he just saw someone die standing.  
  
“Kakashi,” he whines a second later, “there’s nothing else we can do?”  
  
Kakashi looks at him and strokes his chin. “I don’t think so…”  
  
“Nothing? Nothing at  _all_?” Naruto’s tone isn’t the only thing cajoling. Riku hasn’t seen blue eyes that large since the last time Sora tried to convince his mom that  _really_ , he and Riku could  _totally_ captain a ferryboat, so wouldn’t she please buy them one?  
  
Naruto seems to be having more success than Sora did.  
  
“Well…” Kakashi says, sounding doubtful. “You won’t like it.”  
  
Naruto jumps on the opportunity. “I’ll do it! Whatever it is, I’ll do it, I’ll do the best job ever, or my name isn’t Uzumaki Naruto!”  
  
Kakashi smiles again. “I’m glad to hear that.”  
  
Naruto blinks. “So, uh...”  
  
“I have total faith in your abilities.”  
  
“Ehehe, that’s great, but what—”  
  
“And I think it’s admirable that you offered so quickly.” Kakashi pointedly doesn’t look at Sasuke. “Very admirable.”  
  
Naruto starts to turn the same pink that Sakura did. Riku raises an eyebrow. It’s _such_ an extreme reaction; does his uncle never give his students compliments? “Ah, thanks. I just—”  
  
“After all, he’s my only family.” Riku’s stomach relocates to his feet as he stares at Kakashi.  _He’s_ part of Naruto’s punishment? “I can’t leave him with just  _anybody_.”  
  
Naruto frowns. “Leave him with…?”  
  
“Of course.” Kakashi walks over and pats Naruto on the back. “I’m sure the two of you will get along great. He’ll settle into your apartment in no time. And with you teaching him the basics of how to be a ninja, he’s sure to succeed.” Kakashi sounds like he’s trying to sell something; possibly Riku’s soul. Or his dignity. It doesn’t seem to be priced very high, either.  
  
Sasuke glances at him, then says, “I’ll take the students.” He starts to walk away.  
  
Naruto, eyes wide, stares after him. “Hey, wait a second, I didn’t agree to—”  
  
“Of course you did. Or your name isn’t Uzumaki Naruto, remember?” Kakashi, Riku is ninety-percent sure, is  _smirking_  under that mask of his. “I’m so glad you’re taking this seriously, Naruto. It means a lot to me.”  
  
There’s enough sincerity in the last part to shut Naruto’s arguments down completely. His shoulders slump and he stares at Riku as if Riku just told him summer vacation is a myth.  
  
“Okay, fine,” he says, “but you’re buying dinner!”  
  
Riku isn’t sure if Naruto means him or Kakashi; he isn’t sure it matters. Naruto storms off, leaving uncle and nephew alone in the forest.  
  
“Welcome to Konoha,” Kakashi says. His tone is almost sarcastic. “This is going to be fun.”  
  
Riku stares at him and wonders if it’s be possible to run back home to the Islands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in the original draft, Iruka sent Riku away, like "well, you're up against my former students, so I can't really help you." Now, though, I believe Iruka would be way more like "waaaaait, you're up against my beloved former brats? ok, let's make them work for this." Iruka still loves Naruto best.
> 
> I just realized that I didn't include my tumblr in the first chapter: it's [here](http://heraldaros.tumblr.com/), if anyone's interested.


	3. Roommates?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you learn to get along with other people by repeatedly being subjected to them, then Riku and Naruto are quickly going to become best friends. Featuring breakfast, ramen, cameos from characters both named and unnamed, and the seeds of about three different problems (none of which Riku notices at the time, naturally).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so a posting schedule is a joke and a lie I was mostly telling myself. Ha ha ha (sob). But! In good news! I have edited up through the next TWO chapters, so hopefully I'll be able to get those out a lot quicker! They need a couple last checks before I can post them, but we'll see.

Riku can’t remember ever being in an apartment.

He knows, vaguely, what one is. Some of the larger islands have cities big enough that the houses get stacked on top of each other—and that’s how he’s always pictured them, perfectly normal-looking houses that just go up and up and up, each floor with front doors and front windows and porches, even though that makes no sense whatsoever, now that he thinks about it. The island he was born on is one of them, and apparently, when he was very young, he and his mother and father lived in an apartment.

Riku has no memories of that.

Naruto’s apartment is _small_ , and on the very top floor. Riku follows Naruto up flight after flight of stairs, getting the distinct impression that Naruto is sulking the whole way. That’s fine, Riku doesn’t want to talk to him, anyway. It’s not like he _wants_ to live with some kid he doesn’t even know.

Besides, it gives him time to think about something he noticed on the walk through the “village” (which this place is _not_ ; Riku’s town is a village by comparison, and this place is a _metropolis_ ): when people look at Naruto, they scowl, glare, or grimace. No one smiles at him. Most people just ignore him—no one calls out to him, or waves, or even _nods_ at him—but if they look his way, it’s a dirty look. 

Riku almost wants to punch them. Just on principle. He was that kid, getting all the dirty looks, when he and his mom first moved, and he’s gotten a refresher course on the experience over the last month since he broke Sora’s arm. It _sucks_. 

Naruto continues to say nothing until he stops in front of a door. He shoves his hands in his pockets and roots around, then pulls them out empty and tries the door knob. It opens.

Riku raises an eyebrow. “Forget how to use a door?”

Naruto scowls at him. “No!” He doesn’t add anything, just walks inside, kicking his sandals off near the door.

Riku follows him in, until Naruto says, “Hey, hey, take your shoes off! This is  _my_ place, okay.”

“Okay?” Riku toes his shoes off, nudging them out of the way.

Naruto stares at him. Riku stares back.

“Where are you  _from_?” Naruto asks.

“Destiny Islands.”

“So you just walk around with your shoes on inside people’s houses there?” Naruto asks, brows furrowed.

“Sometimes,” Riku says, letting the word hang for a second. “Most people don’t mind, unless you make a mess.” He doesn’t know of anyone with a ‘no shoes in the house’ rule except for Sora’s parents, and that’s because Sora has a tendency to track sand all over their carpets, and it’s just easier to outlaw all shoes all the time. Riku only has— _had_ —to leave his shoes at the front door of his own house if they were wet or dirty. 

Well, he _was_ swimming earlier. That could be why, but he doesn’t think so. This sounds like a rule, like when Kurenai explained about family names.

Whatever. It’s something to confirm with Kakashi later, after “you _are_ giving me a weekly allowance, right?” Riku has his own spending munny—which Kakashi does _not_ need to know, if he hasn’t noticed it already—but when he dodged through the market, he caught glimpses of the munny these people use, and it looks a whole lot different. Riku isn’t sure if his will be any good here. Even if it is, though, he’s perfectly willing to try to talk his uncle into giving him more.

Maybe he can convince Kakashi his birthday is coming up soon…

“You’re kinda boring,” Naruto declares suddenly. Riku’s eyes snap to him and he glares at the kid. Naruto glares back. “What? You _are_. You’re just—standing there, zoning out. Boring.”

Riku rolls his eyes and looks around for a place to sit. There’s exactly one chair next to the table, and he’ll have to walk past Naruto to get to it. Pass. Instead, he winds up leaning against the wall; as soon as he relaxes that tiny bit, though, about a dozen different bruises suddenly remind him that hey, they exist!

It takes an act of willpower to sound calm and natural when he asks, “What do you want to talk about?” He then experiences a moment of _immediate_ regret, as he realizes what he’s just opened himself up to.

Naruto throws his hands up. “ _Any_ thing. Why’d you come here? Why’re you starting so old? Why—”

“I didn’t know about any of this,” Riku cuts him off. He’ll get a headache if he lets Naruto dictate the conversation; he does not want to be up half the night with some weird kid asking him a bunch of things he doesn’t want to talk about, so it’ll be better to just come up with the topics himself. He should’ve done that first. “My dad—Kakashi’s brother—didn’t tell me anything before he left.”

“He left?” Strange. Riku frowns at Naruto. Apparently, the kid _can_ speak softly.

“I was four. I don’t really remember him.” He knows he looks like his dad, that Kakashi looks similar. He knows that his mom cries at night, sometimes, because of that guy. He knows that his dad hadn’t wanted him, that he was why his father left.

He and Kakashi have that in common. Or he and Konoha, maybe. Something about this village made Sho Hatake—Hatake Sho, rather—leave it, just like something about Riku made his father leave him and his mother.

Naruto looks away. He looks—uncomfortable, Riku decides. Not repentant or anything like that, just uncomfortable. After a few tense moments, he says, “I never knew my parents.”

Riku blows out a breath. What’s he supposed to say to that?  _I’m sorry_ just doesn’t cover it, especially since Riku barely knows Naruto and certainly didn’t know his parents. “That sucks. A friend of mine didn’t, either,” is what he settles on. “She was adopted, though. She used to say we were like her brothers.”

He returns Naruto’s smile when the boy looks at him. Naruto seems to be okay with letting the whole twenty-questions thing go, which is fine by Riku, but it’s a bit odd to be standing in someone else’s living room—or is it actually the kitchen?—silently.

Riku sighs and runs a hand through his hair, wincing at the inevitable tangles from air-drying after his dip in the river; he _definitely_ remembered to pack his brush, but it's still with his things and who knows where those are. He's going to wake up with a rat's-nest on his head tomorrow, but there's not much he can do about it now (and, given the state of the one room of Naruto's he's seen, he is _not_ borrowing this kid's hairbrush). On the topic of waking up, he asks, “Where do I sleep?” He isn’t exactly tired, but Kakashi explained that he wouldn’t feel sleepy at the right time for a couple of days and he needs to sleep anyway, otherwise he’ll be up until dawn and sleeping in until noon _all the time_. And then Kakashi will mock him, and possibly dump him in the river to wake him up. He may just resort to a bucket of water, though; Naruto’s apartment is far enough away from the river that even _Sora_ would wake up partway through that trip.

“Well, there’s the floor…”

Riku narrows his eyes at that answer. “Don’t you have a bed?”

“It’s _my_ bed. _I’m_ sleeping in it.”

“We could share.” He’s shared with Sora, when they slept over at each other’s houses.

“ _No_.” Immediate, loud, and in the utterly horrified tone of a scandalized twelve-year-old.

Riku frowns. “Why not?”

“ _Kakashi._ ”

Riku maintains his frown, wondering what his uncle has to do with a sleepover that _Kakashi himself_ basically set up, unless Naruto’s afraid that Kakashi is going to dump buckets of water on _both_ of them every morning. That seems like a pretty reasonable fear, but that will only happen if Riku sleeps in, so the easy solution is just for Naruto to kick Riku out of the bed when _he_ gets up.

He doesn’t even know if Naruto knows about Kakashi’s threat, though, so maybe there’s another reason?

“Kakashi?”

“He’s your uncle, right? He’s gonna make it out to be some…weird…thing, if we share. _Trust me_.” And Riku would ordinarily scoff, because sleepovers are pretty normal and it’s not like Naruto is a _girl_ , but…Naruto probably knows Kakashi better than Riku does.

He sighs and gives in, mentally adding “bed” to the list of things to ask Kakashi for, right under “weekly allowance” and “my stuff.” “Fine, I’ll take the floor.” He can deal with it for one night. “Do you have extra blankets?”

Naruto brightens a little and nods, heading into a tiny hall Riku didn’t notice when he walked in. It leads to a bedroom and another room Riku doesn’t get a chance to look into—the door is shut—as he follows Naruto.

“Here ya go,” Naruto says, dumping an armful of blankets—at least two, folded haphazardly—into Riku’s arms. Since there isn’t a closet in the hall, they had to come from somewhere in Naruto’s room. 

So maybe Naruto expects him to sleep in the living room…?

“Thank you,” Riku says, manners winning out over confusion.

Naruto just nods absently, turning around and heading back into his room.

Awkwardly left standing in the hall, Riku debates with himself for a minute before coming out and asking, “Uh, so, where can I sleep?”

“Anywhere you want!” Naruto pauses, sticks his head through the door. “ _Not_ in the hall.”

“Why not?” Not that Riku wants to, but it seems a little odd to single out just one space.

“I’ll step on you.”

Rolling his eyes—like Riku hasn’t been stepped on before, including times when someone took very deliberate aim at his _face_ with their _feet_ (Tidus and Selphie are merciless to anyone dumb enough to drowse off on the beach)—Riku walks into Naruto’s room and drops the blankets at the foot of the bed.

Well, he tries to. First he has to kick some dirty clothes out of the way. It isn’t  _too_ bad; he’s seen messier rooms. It smells a bit sour, but that’s the worst of it.

“Here good?” he asks.

Naruto nods as he changes into his pajamas. “Yeah, sure.”

Riku starts to settle down, spreading the blankets and thinking about asking for a pillow, when he realizes that he’s still in his borrowed clothes. With a handful of borrowed keys in one pocket and the black-haired wig spilling out of another. Whoops. He should stop by the school tomorrow to return all of it, though the kids are going to ask whether he won or not…

Maybe he can just tell them he beat Naruto and Sasuke? That’s true enough, and two out of three isn’t bad, especially if he can avoid mentioning that Sakura managed to beat him. Thinking back on it, the sun set shortly after he, Naruto, and Kakashi sat down and ordered noodles, so Riku even got _close_.

“Hey, Naruto. Got any spare pajamas?”

“Lemme check.” Naruto starts opening drawers in his dresser and rifling through them, muttering as he does it, something about growth spurts and giant roommates; Riku almost laughs, almost calls Naruto a midget, before biting the inside of his cheek.  
  
He can piss the ninja-kid off when he _isn’t_ living with him. Preferably when he has a head start, too. Based on experience, ten minutes ought to be enough.  
  
The borrowed pajamas turn out to be a t-shirt and a pair of pants that fit surprisingly well around the waist even though the bottoms end a good three inches above Riku’s ankles. Thankfully, both are black; Riku wouldn’t have turned them down if they’d been the same orange as Naruto’s outfit, but he wouldn’t have liked it. The shirt does have the same orange swirl as Naruto’s jacket and Kakashi’s vest, but that’s fine.  
  
The floor’s more comfortable than the beach, or the paopu tree, or the Secret Place, that one time he dozed off in it and wound up with a mustache drawn on his face and a sore _everything_.

He wraps the blankets tightly around himself, folding his legs so that they cover his toes. He hears Naruto shifting on the bed.  
  
“Night,” Naruto says.  
   
Riku blinks in surprise; the kid sounds oddly hesitant. Not uncomfortable, like earlier, just—uncertain, maybe.  
  
“Sweet dreams,” he returns, feeling at home despite how foreign this place is. It’s a habit: his mother wishes him good night, he wishes her sweet dreams. Now, it’s his temporary roommate offering the good night, and of all the things that have happened in the last couple of days—even the last couple of _hours_ —that’s the least strange.  
  
Riku smiles, and falls asleep surprisingly quickly.

///

Someone’s shouting. 

Scratch that, _Naruto_ is shouting.

Riku sits up, winces at the pain in his back from sleeping on the floor, and looks over at the bed, where the ruckus is coming from. On top of the bed, there’s a neat line of bags, Riku’s three duffels and his backpack. And, on the floor beside the bed, there’s a new mattress.  
  
One of the bags jerks up, then another jolts to the side, and he realizes that Naruto is _underneath_ them all. Riku stretches and stands up slowly, taking his time as he walks over and pulls his luggage off his—housemate? Roommate? Acquaintance?  
   
“Not funny, Kakashi!” Naruto yells, starting another rant that Riku cuts off by accidentally smacking him in the face with one of the duffels.

He backs away quickly, but Naruto doesn’t hit him back, only pouts and glares. Riku’s guilty enough that he hastily dumps his stuff on the mattress and volunteers to make breakfast. Naruto looks confused at the offer, and it doesn’t take much questioning to find out that the kid’s never had someone else make a meal for him for free. That’s just  _sad_ ; Selphie might even have cried. Tidus _would_ have cried.   
  
Riku just shifts his weight uncomfortably and asks, “What do you want?”  
  
Staring at him, Naruto asks back, “What do you mean?”  
  
What follows is a question-and-answer like yanking out loose teeth with string and doorknobs: painful and not much of a success until Riku figures out the right method. That method, it turns out, is relating the questions to ramen.  
  
“Which flavors do you like?” gets him a _list_ , and Riku doesn’t recognize everything Naruto rattles off. “Which flavors do you hate?” gets another list, mostly summed up as “vegetables.”  
  
Armed with Naruto’s food preferences, Riku wanders into the kitchen/living room/catch-all room. Naruto follows, muttering about Kakashi as he disappears behind the previously-closed door to what is apparently the bathroom.  
  
Naruto’s kitchen is tiny, and it takes Riku less than five minutes to check all the cabinets and the fridge for food. He has two realizations during this time:

  1. Naruto doesn’t only  _like_ ramen, it seems to be the _only_ thing he eats, based on the contents of the cupboards. The fridge contains only a couple cartons of milk, one spoiled (he can smell it as soon as he opens the fridge door) and the other not much better.   
  

  2. Riku doesn't recognize any of the squiggles and markings on the labels of the food, although the labels are similar enough to the ones back home that he can figure parts of them out. Some things, like the pictures of cows on the milk cartons, are obvious, but if he had to try to follow any kind of written directions, he'd be sunk. This has some fairly terrifying ramifications that he's trying not to think too hard about.



“Your milk’s gone bad,” Riku says when Naruto walks into the room. With extreme prejudice, Riku dumps out _both_ cartons, ignoring Naruto’s squawk of dismay.  
  
“Hey! I bought that! And the old man complains if I don’t drink it! You can’t just dump it out!”

“If someone complains that you don’t drink _this_ , they’re trying to poison you,” Riku says. “You can’t drink that. And there’s nothing healthy in this house.” What’s scary is that Riku could see Sora doing this, if Sora ever lives on his own.

Of course, Sora has Kairi and Riku to force him not make stupid choices. Riku seriously wonders who thought it was a good idea to let Naruto live on his own like this. Not that _Riku_ can live on his own, but he likes to think that he wouldn’t try to live solely on noodles and bad milk.  
  
“I thought you were going to make breakfast, not give me a lecture,” Naruto says.

“I don’t have anything to make breakfast _with_.” Riku makes a face as he tosses the empty cartons in the trash bin. There’s another milk carton already in there, along with a pile of empty instant ramen cups, but the bin isn’t overflowing, so obviously Naruto knows how to take out his trash. That puts him ahead of Riku, who knows vaguely that the bags are supposed to be tied off; everything after that is a haze of “and then Mom magically makes them disappear.”  
   
“What’s wrong with ramen?”  
  
Riku rolls his eyes. “It’s not breakfast. Breakfast is eggs, fruit, rice, toast. Sometimes waffles or pancakes.” Though he doesn’t see a pan in this kitchen, let alone a waffle iron. “Stuff like that.”  
  
Naruto squirms in his seat, making a bunch of amusing faces while he goes through some evidently-complicated thought process. Finally, the kid settles down. “Yeah, well, I don’t want any of that junk! Blegh!” He wrinkles his nose and makes gagging noises.  
  
Again, Riku rolls his eyes. He’s starting to think that Kakashi _really_ sent him with Naruto so that he’ll babysit the kid. It’s kinda obvious that no one else is around to do it, or would want to.  
  
Determinedly, he does not think about what Naruto said about his parents last night. Riku does not think about whether Naruto was ever adopted. Riku’s father came from Konoha and then he—he _left_. Riku doesn’t want to think about him, or any other absentee parents.  
  
(At least on the islands, no one left orphans to fend for themselves.)  
  
Instead, he says, “Fine, have your ramen. I’ll make myself a real breakfast.” There’s no way that ramen will fill Naruto up. By the time Riku’s back and done cooking his own food, Naruto will be starving again.  
  
If he feels nice, Riku might only say “I told you so” once. Maybe.  
  
Unfortunately, food costs munny, and Riku doesn’t have the kind of munny that they use around here; the pieces of paper with faces and weird symbols all over. Riku has enough luck and observational skills to pick up on this _before_ he gets to the point of paying any of the food vendors, so he doesn’t embarrass himself terribly first thing in the morning.  

For lack of any other options, Riku turns around and heads back to the apartment, then drags Naruto out with him instead of letting him try his ramen plan.  
   
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Naruto says, jamming his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t have his jacket, just a black shirt and orange pants. Riku…is unsure whether or not those are actually _yesterday’s_ clothes, and tries to stay a few steps upwind so he won’t find out.  
  
“Kakashi will pay you back,” Riku reminds him, not for the first time. “And I told you, if you don’t like the food I make, I’ll make Kakashi buy you ramen for a week.” He’s about equally unsure of his ability to actually follow through on this as he is of the cleanliness of Naruto’s clothes, but all he needs is to keep _Naruto_ convinced.  
  
“Oh yeah.” Riku doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Naruto’s grinning broadly; he can practically _hear_ it.  
   
The promise of potential ramen keeps Naruto from complaining too much, but only until Riku gives Naruto the task of holding the stuff he bought.  
  
“Do you really need this much stuff to make breakfast?” Naruto asks.  
  
It’s barely an armload, because Riku doesn’t recognize any of the fish sold in Konoha and he isn’t about to buy a week’s worth when he isn’t even sure what it tastes like.  
  
To stay on the safe side, he gets two smallish fish that the fishmonger swore were delicious and easy to cook (which Riku doesn’t necessarily believe, but it’s better than nothing) and decides to pass on any seasonings. The fish will be bland, so Riku buys some rice and sauce, too; he has no idea if the sauce will work with the fish, but Naruto agrees that it’ll go with the rice, so he’s chancing it.  
  
“Yes,” Riku says without looking at Naruto, instead inspecting window displays of pans.  
  
His mom could do so much better here. Even Wakka could probably figure this place’s food out. Out of his group of friends back home, Riku is about equal to Kairi in ability to cook; they have the distinction of being better than Sora, but Sora legitimately doesn’t know not to fill a bucket up in the ocean and then try to boil noodles in that water. Selphie is even worse. She thinks cooking means “burn it until it is a uniform black.”  
  
Tidus just doesn’t try at all. He and his dad seem to live out of their freezer anyway, so he’s never had to learn.  
  
“You didn’t spend all my munny, did you?” Naruto leans against Riku, eyeing the frog purse in Riku’s hands.  
  
Riku closes it and puts it back in his pocket. He hasn’t spent _all_ of the munny, and it wasn’t _exactly_ a lie when he said he would get Kakashi to pay Naruto back. Besides, if Naruto paid attention instead of goofing off and whining the whole time, he would notice Riku haggling in order to save as much of the munny as he could.   
  
Naruto’s oblivious to all of that, though, and sticks his tongue out, right in Riku’s face. Riku feels perfectly justified in pushing him away. With the food in his arms, Naruto stumbles backward and almost knocks into someone.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
The older man— _at least_ twice as old as Kakashi—glares at both of them and walks away muttering about hooligans. Riku doesn’t miss how his eyes snap from Naruto’s neon-orange pants to those weird marks on his face and then to Riku, or the way his glare seems worse when he looks at Naruto.  
  
Questions, questions, and more questions. Riku doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on around him, but everywhere he turns, he finds more things that don’t quite make sense, but never any answers. Considering he’s been in Konoha less than a whole day, that doesn’t bode well for his time here.  
  
“Sorry,” he apologizes for the shove on autopilot, not even looking at Naruto—looking, instead, at the people around them. At the way the people around them look at Naruto.  
  
“No you’re not!”  
  
He isn’t going to get any answers from the kid. Even if Naruto knows them, he has no reason to tell Riku why everyone in his village seems to have a special kind of glare just for him. The village is too big for it to be because Naruto’s a bastard, which would be Riku’s first guess if this happened back on the Islands. There’s that same sense of “you don’t belong here” that he knows intimately.  
  
Part of not asking Naruto is because it’s unlikely to get Riku any answers, but part of it is also that he doesn’t feel right, deliberately poking at any of Naruto’s sore spots. Naruto’s annoying, sure, but that doesn’t make it okay for Riku to be mean.  
  
Riku doesn’t deny Naruto’s accusation—he isn’t sorry, really. Instead, he turns back to the shop with the pans. “One more stop, and we can go back to your place. Think you can handle that?”

Naruto’s sour expression follows him through the door, and Riku only barely manages to stifle a laugh.

///

Watching Naruto’s nose twitch when Riku’s cooking the fish is almost as amusing as watching him drool once Riku’s finished. It isn’t even that fancy, but—well, Riku reminds himself, Naruto was genuinely shocked at the idea of someone else making him food without getting munny in return. People who get home-cooked meals even _infrequently_ wouldn’t have that strong a reaction. It’s a little too depressing to keep thinking about, so Riku shoves his mind into the present, and watches Naruto scarf down the fish in about ten seconds.  
  
Of course, Naruto doesn’t come out and _admit_ that it’s good. The blissed-out look on his face sort of gives him away, but when Riku smirks and asks if it’s better than ramen, he crosses his arms over his chest and refuses to answer.  
  
Riku doesn’t take much longer to eat—the fish is okay, but plain, and it tastes different from what he’s used to. Leaner, maybe? He wishes he remembered more from when his mother taught him how to cook, because he can’t quite put his finger on _how_ it’s different. If the spices around here are equally different (and he won’t know until he tries them), then he’ll have to resign himself to either wild experimentation or boring fish for the foreseeable future.

The rice and sauce are good, though, and pouring the sauce over the fish turns out well, even if it does make Naruto stare at Riku’s plate suspiciously until Riku drizzles the sauce on Naruto’s fish, too. This maneuver is made possible by the fact that Riku is already standing up, leaning against the counter and eating off the plate in his hand. It’s easy to take a step over and pour the sauce on Naruto’s plate.  
  
He doesn’t _mean_ to splash some on Naruto. Really. That’s an accident. Besides, Naruto likes the end result.  
  
“So…” Riku says when they finish.  “What do you do around here?”  
  
Naruto looks confused for a second, then his face clears and he shrugs.  
  
“Train with my team. Uh, well, actually, that’s mostly waiting for Kakashi, ’cause he’s always super-late—”  
  
“Naruto, I’m wounded that you’re telling tales to my beloved nephew.”  
  
Riku can’t properly mock Naruto for falling out of his chair, because Riku also jumps at the sudden and unexpected remark, and bangs his hip painfully against the table.  
  
From the smile on Kakashi’s face—eye crinkled shut, and Riku wonders about that, because the man smiles a _lot_ for someone with grey hair and no laugh lines—Riku knows that his uncle not only did that on purpose, but that Riku can expect Kakashi to _always_ do that.  
  
“You!” Naruto shouts. “You can’t just sneak into my place like that!”  
  
Kakashi’s raised eyebrow seems to say,  _Why yes I can._  
  
Naruto scowls at him. “It’s _my place_. Don’t I get any privacy?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
Riku almost groans. No doubt Kakashi has been spying on them the whole morning. From now on, he’s just going to assume that his uncle is always watching him. Maybe, that way, Kakashi won’t get the jump on him again.  
  
“Good morning, Riku,” Kakashi says, while Naruto gapes, flushes, and flails at Kakashi, making angry, inarticulate sounds. “Did you sleep well?”  
  
Riku makes a face. “Uh, yeah, sure.” As well as anyone can sleep on a floor. “Thanks for bringing my stuff. And a mattress.”  
  
Kakashi smiles again. “You’re welcome.” He glances at the table, the dirty plates, the pan still on Naruto’s weird stove. “No ramen for breakfast?”  
  
“Nope! We had fish. And rice,” Naruto says, grinning broadly.  
  
Riku mutters, “Like it was _your_ idea.” The other two ignore him.  
  
“I see that.” Kakashi smiles again. “Good.”  
  
Naruto shifts, looks over at Riku, and elbows him, still grinning. “You’re not half-bad.”  
  
Riku raises his eyebrows at the faint praise, but can’t help grinning back. Naruto’s good mood is just as infectious as Sora’s. “Gee, thanks.”  
  
Then there’s an awkward moment when the conversation dies, with Kakashi still smiling at the two of them while Naruto stares out the window and Riku turns around to move the dirty plates to the sink. After a few minutes, Kakashi pulls out his book and starts reading—without sitting down (not that he _can_ , with Naruto in the one chair), and without looking uncomfortable, either.  
  
Riku turns on the faucet and starts washing, but he looks up every so often. Kakashi doesn’t move, except to occasionally turn a page. Naruto leaves, going back to his room. He comes back out with a bandage wrapped around his thigh and some sort of pack over it; he also has on his jacket, and this time, Riku _knows_ it’s the same one from yesterday. He wrinkles his nose at that and makes a mental note to ask Kakashi about how to do laundry here, sometime when Naruto isn’t in the room.

Hopefully, ninjas don’t do it by hand. Riku’s mom was only able to afford a washer and dryer last year; Riku is _not_ going back to hand-washing dirty clothes if there’s an even halfway decent alternative.

So far as he’s seen, there isn’t a washer or dryer in the apartment, and the place is small enough that he would have noticed, so maybe Naruto just doesn’t have either. Riku can’t imagine Naruto standing at a sink or sitting next to a tub, cleaning and rinsing his clothes, then hanging them up to dry. He just. Can’t picture it.

Maybe there’s a ninja technique for that. He _can_ picture Naruto doing that much. The apartment is a bit of a mess, and there’s a funk from not cleaning stuff enough, but it’s not nearly as bad as some places Riku’s been. (He’s been to Tidus’s house exactly _once_.)

He isn’t going to say anything in front of Naruto, though, in part because he doesn’t want to embarrass the kid and in part because he doesn’t want to set the kid off, and telling someone they smell is a pretty great way to accomplish both at the same time.

Naruto heads over to the front door and pulls on his sandals. Riku puts the clean dishes away and waits for him to go so he can ask his uncle all the questions he’s been saving up.

“Hold on, Naruto,” Kakashi says, grabbing the collar of Naruto’s jacket before he can do more than reach for the door handle. Naruto twists his neck to frown at Kakashi.  
   
“What? I—”  
   
“Since you’re not busy today,” Kakashi says, talking over the beginning of Naruto’s protest, “I was thinking you could take Riku to the Academy.”  
  
“Why do I have to? Can’t you do it?” Naruto complains. Riku rolls his eyes again; polite and grateful, Naruto is not, and now Riku will have to wait even longer to get his questions answered.

He’s about as patient as Naruto is polite, so this is really not going to work.

“I already know where it is,” Riku says. “I went there yesterday.”

Both of the ninjas turn to look at him. Naruto cracks first.

“Wait, you were _actually there_? I thought those brats were just pulling something!”

Riku shrugs. “They were helping me. The teacher thought that was fair, since your team had the advantage.”

“You got a ten minute head start!”

“You _grew up here_.”

“So what?”

Riku just. Can’t. He just _looks_ at Naruto.

After a couple beats, Naruto manages to look sheepish. The expression goes away when Kakashi closes his book with an audible snap. “I think showing Riku the basics will help you, Naruto. Unless you’d like to join Sasuke and pick up the weapons while the students throw?”  
   
Naruto grimaces and flinches at the same time. “No, no, I’m good! C’mon, Riku, let’s go!” Naruto dashes across the room, yanks Riku away from the sink, grabs Riku’s shoes, and drags him through the door in the space of three seconds. “Seeya later, Kakashi!”  
  
They’re down a flight of stairs before Naruto slows down. He does a double take at the expression on Riku’s face. “What?”  
   
“I’m in _pajamas_.” Too-short pajamas, at that. It was one thing when they went shopping for food.  _Naruto_ had been in his pajamas, too, and besides, Riku hadn’t eaten yet. Caring what other people thought of him was put on hold in the quest for breakfast.  
  
Now, though, he’s fed and Naruto’s dressed.  
  
“Oh.” Naruto eyes him, then winces. “Uh… Okay, we can go back, but be real quick!”  
  
Riku rolls his eyes and, because it looks like he’s probably going to be stuck with Naruto for a while (and he doesn’t just mean today), bites back the first few things that come to mind. 

///

Riku first thinks, when Kakashi says to go to the Academy, that they’ll be in one of the classrooms, and he isn’t thrilled at the idea of learning ninja skills sitting at a desk. He especially isn’t looking forward to learning with a bunch of little kids. Naruto, meanwhile, is sniggering at the very thought of being at the level of six-year-olds.  


“You _do_ realize that a bunch of those kids fooled you _and_ Sasuke yesterday, right?”

Naruto makes a huge production of crossing his arms and turning his nose up. “Using them was cheating, anyway.”

“I don’t remember my uncle saying I _couldn’t_ ask for help.”

Naruto grumbles a bit, but it seems more like habit than any actual resentment. After a few moments of show, even that stops, and Riku decides to give him some space. They get past a couple more blocks before Naruto’s steps slow, then stop completely.

“What’s it like? Outside the village?”

Riku thinks it over. “Slow. Boring, mostly. I didn’t learn any of the stuff you did in school, it was all reading and math and tests.”

The face Naruto makes communicates beyond words Naruto’s opinion of those three things. Riku laughs.

“Yeah. But I had fun, too. Mostly with my friends. Or my mom.” Maybe that makes him sound like a dork, but it’s true. Some of his best memories are with Sora and Kairi, sure, but he’s got plenty more of his mother teaching him how to cast a net for fish, how to cook it the way her parents cooked fish for her; it was in his mother’s old pirate novels that he read about swordplay, and it was his mother who gave him two wooden swords, so he’d be able to play with Sora.

Naruto’s expression melts into something more complicated. Riku can’t puzzle it out at first, but then he remembers how Naruto said _orphan_ last night and it clicks. He doesn’t know how to address it, though, so instead he turns back around and heads for the Academy.

They arrive at the Academy and are met at the front doors by the man Riku ran into while trying to evade Sasuke and Naruto the previous day. Riku still doesn’t know his name.

“Thanks for yesterday,” he says right off, while the man is still opening his mouth. Best get this all out of the way immediately. “These are the things the kids gave me yesterday. Uh…I don’t remember who gave me what, so…”

The man takes the bundle of clothes, wig, and assorted supplies with a wry smile. “I wasn’t sure how it turned out, but they saw Sasuke earlier and jumped to conclusions.” From the way the man’s lips are twitching, there’s a story there, and Riku _really_ doubts he’ll be getting it out of Sasuke.  
  
“You’re here earlier than I thought you’d be,” the man adds, prompting a raised eyebrow from Riku and a frown from Naruto.  
  
“Earlier than you…” Riku says.  
  
“Kakashi _planned_ this!” Naruto shouts at the man, arms starting to flail. “You—hey, let me go!” Riku’s got a grip on Naruto’s arm, to keep from getting nailed in the eye. 

He opens his mouth to tell Naruto to calm down, because he isn’t in the mood to deal with Naruto yelling at more people, even if it is because of Kakashi (and therefore, Riku’s coming to learn, totally justified). He doesn’t have to say anything, though, because the man answers Naruto.

“He did.” The man looks irritated, though Riku guesses that’s more at Kakashi, less at Naruto’s yelling and flailing. “He told me earlier this morning. You’re Riku, right?”

Riku nods. He isn’t sure exactly how to greet the man; he isn’t even sure who the man _is_ , beyond a teacher. He keeps his hands in his pockets and tries to look non-threatening, since the man is obviously a ninja: he has the same metal-plate-thing as Kakashi and all his students, and he also has a big scar on his face, probably from a ninja-battle or something—and besides, it makes _sense_ to have a ninja teach the ninja-students.  
  
“Kakashi made me his _babysitter_ ,” Naruto complains loudly.  
  
Riku glares at him. “You are _not_ my—”  
  
“Boys, boys,” the man says, laying one hand on each of their shoulders. “I only have an hour off, and if you spend it all arguing with each other, I’ll tell Kakashi.”  
  
Riku very much wants to tell him that tattling is for little kids, but Naruto crosses his arms over his chest and pouts again, so Riku lets it go. Besides, ninja. He is not going to talk back to a ninja without a really good reason.  
  
“Excellent. Follow me, we’ll be using the classroom.”  
  
Great. He _will_ be learning ninja skills at a desk. With a sigh, Riku follows the man into the academy, trailing behind both him and Naruto.  
  
The kid snaps out of his sulk in order to ask, “Hey, hey, how’re the kids? Are any of them really annoying?”  
  
Where to _start_ with that, Riku doesn’t even know. It’s kind of hilarious. Either that’s on purpose, or Naruto genuinely has no clue.  
  
The man looks over at Naruto and smiles. “This year is much quieter,” he says. Riku figures that means “none of them are as annoying as _you_ ,” but Naruto doesn’t seem to pick up on that. So: “has no clue” wins, what a surprise.  
  
“So what’d Kakashi tell you about him?” He waves a hand at Riku, as if Riku can’t hear him from behind the huge gap of _two feet of empty air_. “I don’t think he’s that good. He got caught by _Sakura_ yesterday.”   
  
“She got me while he and Sasuke were slap-fighting,” Riku adds, just to see the sequence of shock to anger on Naruto’s face.  
  
The man chuckles and cuts Naruto off before he can explode. “I’m sure they weren’t doing _that_. This is it,” he adds to Riku, smiling as he opens the door and ushers the boys into the same classroom Riku spent some time in yesterday. Riku lets Naruto go first.  
  
“Er, I didn’t get your name yesterday,” Riku says, as the teacher-ninja closes the classroom door.  
  
“You can call me Iruka.” He leans against the desk in the front of the room. Riku glances around for somewhere to sit, but the nearest row of student desks is too far away. He'll just have to stand, then. “So…tell me what you already know so I know where to start.”   
  
“About?”   
  
“Anything. How much training have you had?”   
  
Riku shifts his weight a bit and tries not to grimace. He knows how to sword-fight, but that was a big deal on the islands—for all he knows, here, it could be mandatory for all nine-year-olds to learn how to sword-fight.

“I’ve never really been trained, the way kids here are,” he says slowly, feeling his way around an explanation that will make sense to these people whose children offered him _metal wire_ and looked surprised that he would have no idea what to do with it. “I practiced sword-fighting with a friend. I think that’s the closest thing to what you have. But I know how to sail a boat,” with adult help and supervision on the sea, sure, but he’s _seen_ the river here; he could get a skiff or even a raft up and down that, no problem, “and I know how to fish, with a net or a spear or by hand. I know how to turn seawater into drinking water, and how to light a fire and keep it going on a beach. I know how to run on sand, I can climb trees, and I can swim.”

Mr. Iruka looks—not judgemental, exactly, but blank. Maybe expectant. He doesn’t say anything, and even stops Naruto when the boy opens his mouth.

Okay. Riku takes a deep breath, thinking. This is a test—it has to be, with the way Mr. Iruka is acting—and there’s even a time limit. One hour from when they got here, or maybe a little longer, since they showed up early. Riku has no idea what else he’s going to need that time for, but it probably isn’t just this.

What else could Mr. Iruka be waiting for? These people don’t know anything _about_ Riku, it’s not like they could be testing his honesty or his…accuracy, or something. If Riku says that’s it, that’s all he knows, who are they to say he’s wrong?

And then he remembers: the _letter_ his mom sent. The whole reason he’s here. Nothing he’s said would have made his mom contact his uncle, let alone arrange for Riku to leave with the man.

“I don’t know how it happened, but I…did _something_ , and Mom sent me here.” Another deep breath. “I broke my friend’s arm, somehow.”

“Could you be a little more specific? What did you do?” Without looking, Mr. Iruka says, ”Don’t even think about it, Naruto.” Naruto, one foot on the windowsill, freezes for a second, then slowly climbs back down, scowling at Mr. Iruka.  
  
Unfortunately, after Naruto sits down in the front row—he tries to move farther back, closer to a window, but Mr. Iruka just stares at him with a stern look on his face until he sighs and gives up—Riku doesn’t have anything to distract himself from the question. “We were messing around. Fighting—playing, not arguing,” he clarifies quickly, not wanting either the teacher who helped him yesterday or the guy he’s currently living with to get the wrong impression. “I just wanted to make him drop his sword. I’ve done it before and it didn’t break his arm _then_.”  
  
“You _accidentally_ broke your friend’s arm?” Naruto shoots Riku a look, but Riku can’t quite figure out whether the expression is disappointed or disgusted.  
  
Mr. Iruka frowns and scratches the scar over his nose. “What was ‘it’? How did you break his arm?”   
  
“He disarmed me, and I reached out to disarm him back, and…broke his arm.”  
  
“Were these swords metal?” Mr. Iruka asks next.  
  
“Wood,” Riku answers, trying not to wince at what his mother would have said if he and Sora had started hitting each other with _real_ blades. Or, worse, what kind of damage he could have done to Sora with one.  
  
Sora might not even _have_ an arm, if they’d sparred with real blades. He might not even be alive—he could have bled out, right there on the beach, with all his friends watching and unable to do anything.

“Huh.” Mr. Iruka writes something down—when he got the paper and pencil, Riku doesn’t know—then looks back up and smiles. “You said you reached out for him while you were disarmed. So it was just your hand on his arm?” Riku nods, and he writes something else down. “Well, the good news is that that probably won’t happen again. Most likely, you used chakra to increase the strength of your grip. That’s not a common technique, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone doing it accidentally, but basic chakra control exercises ought to prevent a repeat.”

“Basic chakra control exercises?” There’s only one word there that Riku is mostly unfamiliar with (in spite of Kakashi’s little lectures on the way from the temple to the village), and yet, strung together like that, none of them make sense.  
  
“They’re something every ninja learns,” Mr. Iruka tells him. “You’ll have to practice, and at your age, I wouldn’t be surprised if developing good control over your chakra is a challenge for you, but with hard work and dedication, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.” Before he can say any more, he’s interrupted by a thud. Riku turns while Mr. Iruka buries his face in his hands.  
  
Naruto grins sheepishly from the floor. “Ehehehe, oops?” Then he stands up, dusts his pants off, and gets hit in the arm by a metallic flying  _something_. Said object falls to the floor, but Naruto quickly snatches it up and runs over to the window to throw it at something outside.  
  
“What was…?” Riku starts to ask, but stops. Naruto has no attention for him or Mr. Iruka, who still has his face in his hands. “Can you teach me those exercises?” So far, these ninja haven’t really blown his mind with what they can do, but Naruto’s copies could be a useful trick to learn, and Sakura’s tree-climbing skill alone would seal Riku’s racing wins for the rest of his life. If he can learn the basic thing quickly enough, maybe he’ll be able to pick up one or both of those techniques before he goes home.

Mr. Iruka snorts. “I can teach you how to do a lot of things, and control exercises are only one of them. They’re part of the basics, but there are some other things you’ll need to learn first. That’s what I’ll teach you.”

Riku nods. Basics _always_ come first. Walking before running, letters before sentences, whatever _very_ basic thing Iruka's talking about now before chakra control exercises before copies of himself. “All right, so what are these things?” 

Clearing his throat, Mr. Iruka begins, “There are three main branches of ninja skills: taijutsu, or the purely physical discipline—”

Beating people up, check.

“—ninjutsu, or ninja techniques that use chakra,” cool stuff like those copies, “and genjutsu, or the art of crafting illusions, which also requires chakra.” Tricking people and cheating. Maybe the copies were genjutsu? Or would that be like, if Naruto had just made Riku _think_ there were copies when really there weren’t…?  
  
Priorities. “Ninjutsu, how do I do that?”  
  
“You use hand seals. Each jutsu requires a specific set of hand seals, which must be done in a certain order or else the jutsu won’t work.” Riku hears the words. They register. But all he really processes is _magic spells need magic hand signals_. “Here, let me show you.”   
  
Mr. Iruka puts his hands together, fingers in a certain pattern. Riku raises his own hands, trying to mimic the finger positions.  
  
“Good, good. Let’s try another one.” He clasps his hands together, a different seal, and Riku tries to copy that as well. There’s a clatter on the floor behind him, and Naruto jogs by to retrieve another metal object before returning to his window. That time, Mr. Iruka has to physically adjust Riku’s fingers, bending the pointer finger more and flicking Riku’s wrist until he holds it straighter.  
  
Over the rest of the hour, Mr. Iruka shows Riku twelve hand seals and has him practice them each several times. By the end, Riku’s pretty sure he has cramps in both hands—and he can’t even do any of the seals well enough _or_ quickly enough to pull off a jutsu, according to Mr. Iruka. Naruto starts to mock him, until Mr. Iruka points out that students at the Academy spend about a month learning hand seals.  
  
Still: _embarrassing_. Riku resolves to practice them at the apartment. When Naruto isn’t around.

Mr. Iruka explains that the “basic chakra control exercises” need the hand seals, since that’s how people usually channel chakra through their hands. Meanwhile, Riku isn’t allowed to even _try_ to do that until Mr. Iruka tells him he’s ready. The way he says it, if Riku practices too soon, his hands will fall off or something. It seems a little extreme, and Riku isn’t sure he believes the teacher, but…

He _did_ break Sora’s arm. Maybe doing the exercises too soon would break _his_ hand. He isn’t about to risk that.  
  
With the end of the hour comes a bunch of kids who look ridiculously small; Riku recognizes a few of them, mostly because that handful light up when they see him and rush over, babbling questions and statements about yesterday.  
  
“Come back tomorrow,” Mr. Iruka says, which Riku only half-hears over two different, high-pitched explanations for what happened immediately after he left yesterday. “And Naruto, why don’t you go help Sasuke clean up?”   
  
Naruto looks like he’d been caught trying to sneak out. He rubs the back of his head and grins nervously at Iruka. “Uh…ehehe, do I have to…?”  
  
“Yes,” is the firm reply. “And after you’re done, the two of you can show Riku around town.” 

Riku frowns and wonders if Mr. Iruka can actually order them around like that. From the way Naruto reacts, the kid plans on listening to the teacher, but maybe Sasuke will just blow them off.

In the meantime, Mr. Iruka lets Riku entertain the students with an only _slightly_ altered account of yesterday’s test, in exchange for a quick but thoroughly enjoyable explanation for what happened when Sasuke showed up that morning.

Apparently, the children took it as a sign that Sasuke had lost (which, Riku points out to them, is _true_ ), and they had taken it upon themselves to not only claim victory over the apparent _former best Academy student_ , but also rub his face in the defeat.

“But you lost,” one little girl, with startlingly empty pale eyes, points out.

“Sure,” Riku admits. “Sakura won.” (Mr. Iruka has to clarify that this is _Haruno Sakura_ , apparently the former best kunoichi student, and what the difference is between a kunoichi student and an Academy student, no one bothers to explain.) “But Sasuke lost, too.”

The students accept this, and after a quick, brutal discussion, conclude that Riku, with as little training as even _they_ can tell he’s had, really didn’t stand a chance of outright winning. Beating Sasuke and Naruto, the group decides, is a fairly impressive accomplishment.

Riku, generous in this partial victory, says, “I couldn’t have done it without all of your help.” That makes the kids preen, beaming and puffing themselves up. That’s when Mr. Iruka redirects the class’s attention to the lesson, and Riku gets sent outside to wait there for Naruto and Sasuke to finish.

As it turns out, Riku’s suspicions are right. Naruto helps Sasuke collect up a bunch of small metal objects—probably the ones Naruto has been throwing out the window, and Riku has no doubt that Sasuke has been tossing them right back at him—and makes an effort to try to recruit Sasuke as a tour guide. Riku has to give him credit for that.  
  
“C’mon, Sasuke, just for a while?” Naruto pleads. Riku stands nearby, close enough to hear them but maintaining enough distance that it hasn’t occurred to either boy to try to talk him into picking up the metal things.

“He’s your responsibility, not mine.” Sasuke glances at Riku, and Riku wants to punch him—he isn’t a pet or something, and he doesn’t want to be Naruto’s responsibility anyway. That’s Kakashi’s fault.  
  
Besides, it’s more the other way around. Naruto might _think_ he’s babysitting Riku, but look who made breakfast, who has plans about the laundry. There is one responsible person living in that apartment now, and it sure isn’t _Naruto_.  
  
“Kakashi tricked me!”  
  
“No, you’re just an idiot.”

“Take that back!”  
  
“Hn.”  
  
Riku rolls his eyes and decides he’s had enough of letting kids boss him around. Well, so far, Sasuke hasn’t bossed him around, but his attitude is annoying and Riku doesn’t want to hang out with him _anyway_. To prove this, he grabs Naruto’s sleeve and starts walking away from the Academy.  
  
“You—hey! What’re you _doing_?” Naruto sputters, stumbles, and finally gets himself together and follows after Riku—but not without shooting Sasuke a hand sign that Iruka _definitely_ didn’t cover.  
  
“You’re showing me around. Do you know where Kakashi lives?” Riku asks, once they get sufficiently far enough away that Naruto and Sasuke can’t antagonize one another directly. Naruto looks around their slice of the village for a few seconds, then shakes his head.  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Do you know where we could find him?”  
  
Naruto shrugs. “I don’t know. Unless we’re training, he just kinda disappears somewhere. We could go ask the old man if you _really_ want.” His tone indicates that _he_ doesn’t really want, but Riku ignores that.  
  
“Old man?”  
  
“The Hokage! Didn’t Kakashi tell you _anything_ about Konoha?” Naruto has gotten louder by ‘Konoha,’ and a few people nearby stop and look at them.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I met him.” He remembers their introduction, and Kakashi’s mentioning that the Hokage was an important person—but Naruto expects Riku to be psychic if he thinks that Riku would connect the dots between the Hokage being old and Naruto meaning him when he said “the old man.” Surely Konoha has more than _one_ old person. “Let’s ask him then. Where’s he live?”  
  
Naruto starts snickering, then chuckling, then laughing so hard he doubles over and holds his stomach. Even more people turn to look at them, though they all turn away as soon as they get a look at who’s laughing. They all get the same look on their faces before turning away.  
  
It was never _this_ back home. Some of Riku’s earliest memories are of people ignoring him and his mom—or, worse, whispering behind their backs—but that stopped once Riku befriended the mayor’s daughter. Of course, all of that had been because Riku’s mom had moved them onto the new island husbandless and fatherless.  
  
Now that he knows it’s basically _everyone_ who treats Naruto this way, with the exceptions of Kakashi and Mr. Iruka, he figures it might not be a bad idea to ask Kakashi about it. Not with Naruto nearby, obviously, but it is something he should probably know about, since he’s living with the kid and all. Chances are, the reason Naruto is being shunned is just as stupid as the reason Riku was. He still wants to know what it is, though—partially, he has to admit to himself, because he’d rather not be shunned in his new home just because his uncle stuck him with this kid.  
  
He hopes it isn’t just because Naruto doesn’t have any parents. That would just be—if _that’s_ why, then Riku will have to leave. No way is he staying in a place that shuns orphans. That’s even worse than the islands, and it would force him to sympathize with his—with Sho’s decision to leave Konoha. He’d rather not do that, thanks.  
  
Instead of voicing any of that, he asks, “What’s so funny?”  
  
“ _You_!” Naruto answers, breathless and red-faced and still grinning. “You don’t go to the Hokage’s _house_ , you go to his _tower_. He’s even there really late at night, doing paperwork and stuff. Ugh.” Naruto makes a face and sticks his tongue out. Riku makes a face as well, guessing that the Hokage is like Kairi’s mom. Her desk is always stacked high with papers and forms and things.  
  
“So we go to the Hokage’s tower,” he says, irritated at being laughed at. “Are you going to tell me where that is?”  
  
‘Tower’ is a bad description. Riku notes a handful of buildings around the village that could be called towers, and that only counts the ones he can see from here or that he remembers from his run through the village yesterday.  
  
“Do we have to go right now?” Naruto says, ignoring the question. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to Ichiraku’s first.”  
  
Riku stares at Naruto, still irritated but also taken aback. They ate a couple hours ago and _he_ isn’t hungry at all. He considers protesting, but Naruto might be bottomless like Sora, and besides, he’s the only person Riku even vaguely trusts not to get him hopelessly lost.  
  
“Fine, we’ll go to Ichiraku’s.”  
  
“Awesome! And you’re paying!”  
  
“…With what munny?”  
  
Naruto’s wide, smug grin falters, then disappears as Riku’s words register. “Oh yeah…” He brightens again almost immediately. “Then you can get Kakashi to pay me back!”  
  
Riku says, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” but only so that Naruto won’t bug him about it all day. It works; Naruto starts babbling about…something related to the Hokage. Honestly, Riku knows that he should be listening, because whatever Naruto is saying is probably at least a little useful, but Naruto’s voice keeps hitting a pitch or volume or something that switches Riku’s brain off. All he can do is nod along and make vaguely appropriate sounds, like “hm” and “oh,” on the way to the ramen stand.   
  
“So what about you?” Naruto says, after a short pause that lets Riku’s brain start working again.   
  
“What?”  
  
Naruto rolls his eyes. “What’s your dream?”  
  
Riku falls silent for a few minutes—long enough for Naruto to start sulking over not getting an answer. “I wanted to visit other worlds with my friends.”   
  
Naruto snaps out of his sulk. “Other worlds?”  
  
“Yeah. One of my friends came from another world. I told her that we would leave the islands and go find her world someday. I guess I got a head start.”  
  
“Huh.” The look on Naruto’s face is one of disbelief; Riku doesn’t precisely blame him. Kairi has told everyone who cares to listen her story about growing up on another world, but most of the adults just patted her on the head and, behind her back, told each other that it’s normal for a shipwrecked, lonely survivor to make up such an unbelievable story. They told each other that she probably even believed it herself. Riku knows because those adults never _stopped_ saying things like that, and Riku’s had a lot of eavesdropping practice over the years. Considering what people said about _him_ and his mother, the rumors that Kairi was making up tall tales and then believing them were almost kind. So Riku isn’t surprised that Naruto thinks he’s lying about other worlds, or mistaken, or whatever is going through the kid’s head; Riku _is_ surprised that the only thing Naruto says on the subject is, “Well, you should definitely keep your promise.”  
  
Like he needs _Naruto_ to tell him that. Riku doesn't even dignify such an obvious statement with a response. Instead, he just follows the kid’s lead when they get to the ramen stand and sits down on one of the round seats.  
  
Naruto pulls out his purse, scowls at it, and orders “just two bowls of miso ramen.”  
  
“One of those is mine, right?” Riku asks. He suspects that, with ramen, he can’t take that for granted. Even though he isn’t particularly hungry, he isn’t about to sit quietly while the kid next to him eats. Not only is that rude, but it’d probably _make_ him hungry, and he doesn’t have any Konoha-munny of his own. Yet.  
  
Naruto nods and starts talking to the man behind the counter. Riku guesses that they know each other pretty well, and neither the man nor the young woman working with him give Naruto dirty looks or glares.  
  
Two bowls of ramen are set in front of them and Naruto digs into his like he’s dying of hunger; Riku starts by mostly just poking the noodles around in the bowl.  
  
“Does your world have ninja?” Naruto asks, pausing in his noodle inhalation.  
  
“No, but we know what they are. A friend of mine dressed up as one for Halloween, once.” When they were ten, and Kairi still has the pictures of Selphie dressed head-to-toe in black pajamas with only her eyes showing. All Riku remembers about that night is Selphie chasing around Tidus, Wakka, and Riku himself—who had all unwisely decided to dress up as pirates, the mortal enemies of the ninja—and thwacking them over the head whenever she caught them.  
  
So far, Kakashi matches the islanders’ idea of ‘ninja’ the best. Naruto doesn’t match at _all_.  
  
“…If there aren’t ninja in your world, what do you do all day?”  
  
“What kind of question is that? We go to school or go swimming if it’s not raining. That’s what the kids do. And like I said, Sora and I would fight.” He moves his bowl out of Naruto’s reach—Naruto’s is empty and Riku’s taking no chances.  
  
“That’s it? School and swimming and fighting?” Naruto crosses his arms on the counter, slouching in his seat to rest his chin on them and staring at Riku. “You eat really slow.”  
  
Riku rolls his eyes and ignores the last comment. “Well, we used to explore an abandoned island nearby, but it was small. We ran out of things to find, so we started just going there to play.” And to spar—he wasn’t kidding when he said they couldn’t do that at home. Not that their parents didn’t know, but Riku wasn’t an idiot. _Knowing_ and  _seeing_ are two very, very different things.   
  
His mother took the sword away, when he broke Sora’s arm. Like he would do it again; like he hadn’t learned his lesson.  
  
“Huh. Didja have a lot of friends?”  
  
Riku blinks, sidetracked from his thoughts, then smiles. “I had a few. Two really good friends. Sora and Kairi.” He doesn’t reach for the necklace under his shirt. He can feel it just fine against his chest.  
  
“Oh.” Naruto’s whole body seems to slump a bit more. He nods at the bowl of ramen. “You done with that?”  
  
There are a few noodles left. Riku pushes the bowl away from him. The young woman takes it, shooting a worried look Naruto’s way.  
  
“You feeling okay, Naruto?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah.” Naruto sighs and stands up. Within moments, he seems to recover his good mood, practically bouncing in place as Riku stands up as well. “C’mon, let’s go!”  
  
Shaking his head, Riku follows Naruto away from the ramen stand. He almost asks Naruto what’s wrong, but doesn’t. If it’s important, he can ask or find out later, and if it isn’t, then it isn’t any of his business.

///

“Here we are!” Naruto announces, diverting Riku’s attention from his hands. The trip from the ramen stand is quiet, and Riku takes advantage of Naruto’s temporary silence to go (slowly, still) through the hand signs he learned that morning. He looks around and promptly frowns.  
  
“This is the Academy.”  
  
They’ve gone in a circle, basically. At least the Academy is Sasuke-free, now.  
  
“Yeah. That’s the Hokage tower right over there.” Naruto points to a building not far away from the Academy’s entrance, a building close enough to the Academy that Riku suspects they’re part of the same structure.  
  
“Why didn’t you just  _say_ that?”  
  
Naruto grins. “I didn’t want to. This way was more fun.”  
  
Riku scowls at him before heading toward the building. Naruto walks next to him, fingers laced behind his head in a very Sora-like way. Even the wide grin on his face reminds Riku of Sora.

They could be cousins, he thinks, studying the kid’s profile. Or Naruto could be Tidus’s cousin, going by coloring. All three of the boys have the kind of easy friendliness that Riku’s never been able to master.  
  
True to Riku’s suspicions, when they reach the building Naruto pointed out, it shares a wall with the Academy. He can’t tell from outside, but it certainly looks connected. Unlike the Academy, though, there are guards with painted masks at this door. These, finally, look like _real_ ninja: head-to-toe coverings, obvious armor and weaponry, faceless and exuding danger.  
  
“Just ignore ’em,” Naruto advises. The masks hide their faces, but they seem to recognize him: they don’t move at all, which seems to mean Riku and Naruto are allowed to go through. “They won’t stop _us_.”  
  
Riku wonders who they _would_ stop, but doesn’t ask. At some point, though, he’ll have to corner Kakashi and get his uncle to fill him in on all this stuff. He’s tired of feeling stupid just walking around.  
  
After that, Naruto leads him along, down a hall, up some stairs, and down another hall. It’s easy enough to remember, with no turns at all; way easier than the noisy streets outside. They don’t see many people, either.  
  
“Where is everyone?” Riku asks, after they pass the eighth person in a painted mask.  
  
“Uh…” Naruto scratches the back of his neck, then shrugs. “Well, the kids are all at school, still—until the afternoon. Then there’s genin, like me and my team. I guess most of them are training, or doing missions. I don’t know what chuunin do… I mean, besides Iruka, he’s teaching. Kakashi’s a jounin, who knows what _they_ do when they’re not training their teams.”  
  
Riku frowns. He doesn’t know the difference between a “genin,” a “chuunin,” and a “jounin,” and that still doesn’t answer his question. “So no one comes around here?”  
  
Naruto shakes his head. “Not really. Later on, like after lunch, the old man’ll be downstairs to pass out missions, but he has to do paperwork in the mornings.” Naruto makes a face. “He doesn’t like people bugging him, so that’s why there’s just ANBU around.”  
  
“ANBU?”  
  
“The ones with the masks.” Naruto holds a hand over his face, mimicking them. “They’re really boring. They don’t talk unless it’s like—‘the Hokage will see you now,’ or ‘the Hokage is too busy to see you.’” Naruto tries to make his voice deeper, and monotone. It doesn’t quite work, but it’s hilarious to listen to him try, and he grins along with Riku.   
  
“Where’s the Hokage?” Riku asks, eyeing a nearby door.   
  
“In his office, a little further up.”  
  
The Hokage’s office, Riku notices, does not have anyone standing guard outside of it. He finds out when Naruto opens the door that that’s because the guards are _inside_ the office, which makes more sense than them being outside, when he thinks about it. Said guards turn to the door when the two boys enter, and the Hokage looks up from a small stack of paperwork.  
  
“The Hokage will see you now,” one of the guards says. Naruto shoots Riku a look that clearly says, _See? I told you so!_ Riku snorts but nods; that is more than a little strange.  
  
The Hokage nods and waves a hand, and both guards turn and leave the room, shutting the door behind them.  
  
“Hey old man,” Naruto says.  
  
Riku glances at him, frowning. He’s gotten the impression that the Hokage is sort of like a ninja-mayor for the village. That impression doesn’t mesh with how Naruto is talking to him; not even _Kairi_ would talk to her mother like that. When Riku looks at the Hokage, though, he doesn’t look mad. He just leans forward, his mouth twitching a bit like it’s trying to decide if it wants to smile.  
  
“What is it you want, Naruto?”  
  
Naruto grins. “Where’s Kakashi live?” he asks promptly. Then he jerks a thumb at Riku. “He doesn’t know and Kakashi took off without giving him any munny, so he owes me for ramen.”  
  
“I did make you breakfast,” Riku says, crossing his arms over his chest. Even if he did promise to pay Naruto back, the kid could show a little gratitude. Maybe no one cooks him homemade food because he doesn’t appreciate it when they do.  
  
Naruto makes a face and rolls his eyes. Riku gives him a sour look in return, not conceding the point. Finally, the Hokage speaks up.  
  
“I’ll tell you where your uncle lives, Hatake, but in return you have to do me a favor.”

“What’s the favor?” Riku asks warily.  
  
The Hokage’s whole face seems to crinkle as he smiles widely. “Keep Naruto out of trouble for the rest of the day.”  
  
Riku hesitates. That sounds like _work_. Plus, he’ll have to stick around Naruto, which means he can’t get Kakashi to answer any of his questions. On the other hand, though, his only alternative is to wander around town shouting his uncle’s name until someone takes pity on him and gives him directions.  
  
“Fine,” he says, while Naruto mumbles protests about not needing a babysitter.  
  
The Hokage smiles again, motioning Riku over to his desk. He hands Riku a slip of paper with, Riku assumes, Kakashi’s address on it—another question for Naruto, because yes, just like with the labels earlier, Riku cannot even begin to decipher what the Hokage has written.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, and heads for the door, grabbing the collar of Naruto’s jacket on the way.  
  
“Hey, _hey_! I can walk by myself!” Naruto yells at him, stumbling a few steps before tugging himself out of Riku’s grip and smacking the offending arm.    
  
“Sure you can,” Riku says, rubbing his arm where Naruto hit it before opening the door to the hallway. He lets Naruto out first, and hesitates but decides against holding it open for the ANBU standing on either side of the door. After he passes, they go back in—so quickly that Riku doesn’t even see them move.  
  
That’s something else he’d like to learn: how to move that fast. He wonders if Iruka will teach him that, or if it’s something only ANBU know. If it’s the latter, then it probably takes years to master, which is a pity. He isn’t sure becoming a master ninja is worth staying here for years.  
  
“You’re going to help me find this address, aren’t you?” Riku asks, waving the paper at Naruto.  
  
Naruto thinks about it for a few seconds, crossing his arms and tilting his head to one side. “If I do, you have to pay me back for the ramen.” 

The kid is obsessed with that stuff. Riku himself likes fish, and doesn’t really know how to cook much else, but he doesn’t bring it up at every opportunity.  
  
“And make me breakfast again,” Naruto adds, and narrows his eyes at Riku, as if he expects a disagreement.  
  
Riku smirks. “I thought you only wanted ramen for breakfast?”  
  
Naruto crosses his arms over his chest and glares at him. “The stuff you made wasn’t  _too_ bad,” he says. “Even though ramen’s better. And cheaper.”

“So don’t you want ramen for breakfast? Since it’s better and cheaper.”

Naruto grumbles and stomps, but when they reach the stairs, he finally mumbles, “I liked it.” Then, louder, “I’m not gonna help if you don’t agree!”

Riku rolls his eyes. Sora could be annoying sometimes, but Naruto seems to be that way _all_ the time. Annoying and _loud_.

“Sure. But you have to help pay for it, too.” He isn’t going to spend all his munny on food that Naruto helps eat.  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” Naruto says, and sticks his tongue out at Riku.  
  
Riku scowls back at him. “ _Good_.”  
  
If he’s really lucky, his uncle will keep Naruto busy and out of Riku’s hair. If Riku isn’t lucky, then he is definitely going to try dumping Naruto into the river someday soon. In the early morning, when the water is _cold_.


	4. Errand and Allowance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku and Naruto tour Konoha, talk to some people, and earn Riku's allowance. That's it, that's the chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time, but the good news is, I have the next couple-three chapters mostly edited, so over the next few weeks, expect some more regular updates.

Riku and Naruto make it to Kakashi’s apartment with few difficulties; unlike Naruto’s ridiculous, top-floor apartment, Kakashi lives on the entirely reasonable second floor. There’s even an elevator, although Naruto ignores it and heads straight for the stairs.

Elevators are a bit of a novelty for Riku—he distinctly remembers the first time he was in one, when he was nine and his mother took him to a bigger island for some sort of celebration—so Naruto’s insistence on avoiding this one is a disappointment. Riku doesn’t want to be stuck in it by himself, though, and since Naruto is once again being quiet, Riku decides to keep his mouth shut and follow along. He isn’t a child, needing to play with the elevator buttons and hear the machine _ding_ when he gets to the correct floor; he can take the stairs.

Naruto leads them down Kakashi’s hall, stops in front of his door, and knocks loudly before moving to stand behind Riku.

Okay.

If Naruto thinks Riku’s about to put up with being a human shield, he’s going to learn just how fast Riku can get out of the way. There’s no sense in giving an advantage away, though, so Riku resigns himself to doing the talking.

When Kakashi answers the door, he looks _tired_ , and Riku almost, _almost_ feels bad for him. _But_. Kakashi woke him up rudely that morning, so Riku resolves not to care, not even if Kakashi had gone right home and back to sleep after that. (Judging by the bag under his eye and his bedhead, that’s a pretty good bet.)

Kakashi clearly makes eye contact with them, and then does not hesitate a second longer to close the door in their faces.

Riku can’t hear him move _away_ from the door again, so he feels pretty justified in banging on the door this time while, behind him, Naruto starts cursing.

The door does not open. Riku bangs on it again; rude, yes, but so apparently is his uncle. It isn’t until Naruto actually hauls off and _kicks_ the thing that it opens again. (Down the hall, a middle-aged lady in a robe yells threats if the noise doesn’t stop. Then someone else yells at _her_. Riku has a sudden and intense opinion on piling so many people into such a small building. It is _not_ a positive opinion.)

“What do you want?” Kakashi asks, and he _sounds_ as tired as he looks, just barely not slurring any words.

“Munny,” Naruto says.

“An allowance,” Riku corrects.

“Which is munny.”

Naruto’s right, but Riku doesn’t really want to admit that, so he settles for rolling his eyes. He’s pretty sure he’s done that more since meeting Naruto than he did in the entire rest of the month. It’s possible he’s rolled his eyes more at Naruto than he has in his _life_.

Kakashi contemplates them with a dead eye. If Riku didn’t already think the man was tired, now he’d think Kakashi wants nothing more than to slam the door shut in their faces. Again. And actually walk away this time. Honestly, Riku’s kind of expecting to have a wallet tossed in his face, just to make the two of them go away.

Alas, it doesn’t happen like that. “I could give you an allowance.” Kakashi yawns at both of them; it stretches his mask out oddly. “But you’ll have to earn it.”

Riku stares at him. He wonders if this is peculiar to ninja parents, because Kairi has an allowance for _existing_ , and while Sora has chores, Riku doesn’t really think that’s what Kakashi has in mind.

Besides, any chores Riku does will be at Naruto’s apartment, where he lives. He’ll probably just end up doing that anyway; going from what he’s seen of Naruto’s apartment, Naruto is the type to put chores off as long and as often as possible.

“How?” he asks. Possibilities flit through his mind: what he already knows about Kakashi runs headlong into what he used to think was true about ninjas. He could be stuck with anything from burying dead bodies (no) to polishing knives (cool) to cleaning Kakashi’s apartment with his toothbrush ( _hard pass_ ).

Kakashi’s eye crinkles. “Maa, don’t worry. Small tasks.” He pauses, staring over Riku’s head for a few moments; maybe the same possibilities are flitting through _his_ head (Leviathan, Riku hopes not).

Then, before Naruto can wave a hand in front of his face—he starts to lean forward and reach out—Kakashi says, “I have one for you now.”

He turns and walks into his…room. Riku and Naruto both peek around, leaning in to see more, although neither step past the door.

It’s just one room. Riku can’t even see a door to a bathroom anywhere. Five steps could take him over to the opposite wall. Naruto’s apartment is small, but it’s huge compared to Kakashi’s.

He’s glad he’s stuck with Naruto, if the alternative is living _here_. Though, if Riku’s toothbrush-cleaning possibility becomes true, at least it’ll be a manageable awful chore.

“Here you go.” Kakashi holds what looks like a rolled-up piece of paper out to Riku. There’s a red band around the middle keeping it rolled up, and when Riku takes it, he’s surprised at its weight. No paper should realistically feel more like a book.

“What do I do with it?” asks Riku, examining the band.

“Take it to Sasuke.” Kakashi looks at Naruto. “You know where he lives, don’t you?”

Naruto grumbles something, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking sullen, but he nods.

“Good. Take Riku there. Wait for him to read it before coming back for your allowance.”

Riku says, “I’m not your errand-boy, I’m your nephew.” This seems like a thing he’ll need to remind Kakashi about a lot. After a moment’s thought, it occurs to Riku that Kakashi may genuinely not even realize the _difference_ ; all Riku knows about his paternal grandparents is that they were both dead by the time his father left Konoha.

All Kakashi has are his students, and here he is, giving Riku _and Naruto_ this chore. He probably, really, truly _does not know what else to do with Riku_.

That’s the second saddest thing Riku’s heard all week. (Naruto’s little sob story still wins.)

While Riku’s having this horrified realization, Kakashi and Naruto move on with their lives. “If you hurry, you’ll catch him before he leaves to train,” Kakashi says.

Naruto snorts. “All he _does_ is train. Isn’t he supposed to take it easy?”

“It’s been long enough since the last mission.” Kakashi smiles. “It’s good of you to worry about your teammate, though.”

Naruto turns an interesting shade of red and immediately begins mumbling about Sasuke; Riku doesn’t care, so he doesn’t bother listening. Kakashi looks happy—he’s smiling, at least, or so Riku assumes—as he closes the door in their faces. Again.

Riku stares at it for a few seconds, then at the roll of paper in his hand. He turns it over, wondering if it’s worth trying to open and peek at whatever is hidden inside.

“What’s it say?” Naruto asks, leaning over to check out the paper as well.

Decision made. “Why don’t you ask Sasuke when we give it to him?” Riku says, pocketing the paper. “I’m not going to open it. Let’s go get the delivery over with.” The less time spent on the whole errand, the better, especially once they have to interact with Sasuke. He doesn’t seem to like Riku, and the feeling is mutual.

That’s a bit weird, when Riku thinks about it. He hasn’t ever disliked someone more or less on sight before. Then he has to correct himself: he didn’t have a problem with the kid when Sasuke was just sitting and staring at Sakura. No, the problem started when Sasuke started scowling and glaring and just generally making it apparent that he isn’t the kind of person it’s fun to be around. That he is, in fact, the exact opposite of fun to be around.

Even Naruto, who’s loud and annoying and does things like walk Riku around in a circle, is at least _more pleasant than Sasuke_ to spend time with. Riku wasn’t great friends with Tidus, but he’s never had trouble getting along with him, and he figures it will be similarly easy with Naruto. Maybe that’s part of Riku’s problem with Sasuke; he doesn’t have a friend back on the islands anything like the sullen kid.

Or maybe it’s just that Naruto smiles and Sasuke scowls, and Riku knows which of the two he’d rather be around, even if the smile is attached to a perpetually-moving mouth.

The walk from Kakashi’s apartment to Sasuke’s house is the longest trip Riku has taken since arriving in Konoha. Naruto says it’s “across town,” so Riku thinks it’s roughly equivalent to the trek from the school to the training ground yesterday, but no. Oh no. See, Konoha is not so much a _circle_ as it is an _oval of doom and despair_ , and between Kakashi’s apartment and Sasuke’s house are no less than three markets, four popular hangout spots, and about half a dozen occupied training grounds.

Riku and Naruto have to, at one point, avoid an arm-length blade that _breaks off a chain_ and hurtles directly toward them—Naruto flips out of the way, looking cool and calm and collected, while Riku turtles up, like a normal person would do when twelve inches of _painful death_ comes towards them. The young man who dashes over to collect the broken blade is all apologies, which Naruto waves off while Riku straightens and tries to get his heartbeat and breathing under control.

Yesterday, Riku’s impression of Konoha was “very green, lots of people and trees.” Today, he wouldn’t even _talk_ about the trees, the same way he would never describe Destiny Islands as having “a lot of water.” What would be the point? The trees are both obvious and ubiquitous: in some places, freestanding, in others, fenced off.

Between the fences and the trees, the village seems a bit like a labyrinth, and Riku feels more boxed-in than ever before. Sure, the ocean was a constant barrier for as long as he could remember, but he could at least see the horizon over it. In some parts of Konoha, he’s surprised to still see the _sky_.

A lot of the trees that aren’t part of a training area or don’t have a fence around them are, instead, part of a building. Or a group of buildings. Some of them, it’s obvious enough that he noticed it yesterday, but not all of them. A few have clearly been hollowed-out, with a door set into the trunk and everything, but Riku only sees a grand total of four of those. They’re weird enough that he keeps count, too; like something out of a fairytale book, or the sort of house he imagines Kairi living in as a small child, with a huge garden sprawling out in all directions.

None of them have _that_. In fact, other than the trees and sometimes grass, Riku doesn’t see a whole lot of plants; every so often, there’s a box in a window with some green thing sprawling out of it, or a spray of colorful flowers. He knows well in advance when those are coming up, though; in contrast to the ever-present but subdued smell of the trees, which he’s slowly growing accustomed to, the flowers are overwhelming. Not nearly as overwhelming, though, as the marketplaces, which are full of _people_ and _food_ and _goods_ , leather and steel, spices and oils, sweat and perfume.

Naruto takes Riku along a few rope-bridge paths, to avoid the crowded markets.

He does this without a word of acknowledgement that Riku is, just barely, resisting the urge to grab his hand or the back of his shirt; just barely resisting pulling his own shirt up over his face; just barely resisting turning around and trying to flee back to the apartment, all to avoid getting lost in a huge throng of more people and smells than Riku’s ever encountered in his _life_. Riku is unspeakably grateful.

Not that Naruto doesn’t talk—he does. Just not about how Riku is a whiny baby who can’t handle crowds.

The one-sided conversation starts before they leave Kakashi’s apartment building, and predictably, it starts with the fact that Kakashi is a jerk. Naruto tells Riku all about the _first_ bell test, where Kakashi caught Naruto and knocked him out and trapped Sasuke in the ground so only his head poked out, and then tied Naruto up while the other two had lunch. Then Naruto explains the Memorial Stone, how only heroes have their names on it, how the only way to get your name there is to _die_.

Naruto says, like he’s proud, “My name’s gonna be on it, one day.” Like that’s a _worthy goal_. “Not for a long time, though! I’ve gotta become Hokage, first.” Then, with a sweeping kind of generosity, “Did you have anything like that, where you came from?”

Riku thinks about memorials, and monuments. There’s the Shrine to Lost Sailors, in Leviathan’s temple, and there’s the stained glass wind chimes that the priests of Valefor will make you, when someone passes away. There are private shrines, in the home, but not a whole lot of public ones, and for heroes specifically…? Oh, wait, yes.

“In our Town Hall, there’s a wall with the names of everyone who’s died fighting off pirates,” he says, picturing it in his head: the wall is more of a set of ancient stone tablets; the oldest names, at the top of the first tablet, are bigger and more widely-spaced; more recent names are smaller, sharper, less worn. The mayor and her council always sit across from them. “Sometimes, people get on there by hunting the pirates down.”

Then he needs to explain what pirates are, and Naruto explains what missing-nin and ANBU are, and that takes most of the rest of the walk.

As they get closer—when Naruto starts saying “we’re almost there” when Riku looks at him—Riku notices that the buildings are more run-down. The paint is dingier, the signs are obviously cheaper, and there are fewer people walking around. Riku smells alcohol more than once, but can’t quite tell whether it’s coming from the same street or the next street over; all he can pick up is leftover odors from the night before.

If the whole area hadn’t been leading up to it, Riku might be surprised when Naruto stops in front of a street partially blocked by a dilapidated gate. In fact, he’s more surprised that the pavement leading up to that gate is in good repair, as is most of the wall on either side of the gate.

That wall isn’t nearly as high as the one around all of Konoha, and the gate isn’t nearly as big as the one Riku passed through yesterday with Kakashi, either, but he figures it probably does its job well enough; he guesses it’s taller than Kakashi, so it probably keeps out anyone who isn’t a ninja.

“Sasuke lives here?” Riku asks, examining the gate. It has a red semicircular mark in the middle of it, but he has no idea what the mark _is_. Some sort of symbol, obviously, but that’s as far as he gets.

“ _In_ here. He lives at the end.” Naruto walks through the gate, and Riku follows him.

The street is empty; the buildings—some houses, others closed-up shops—are empty. Abandoned. Riku almost asks Naruto if they can check out one of them. If the area outside that gate is run-down, the area inside is like a ghost town.

“It doesn’t look like _anyone_ lives here,” he says.

Naruto just shrugs. When Riku glances at him, he looks uncomfortable. Riku adds this to the list of things he’ll ask Kakashi about at some point, and lets it drop.

Maybe, eventually, he’ll poke around one of these abandoned houses or shops. He doesn’t think he’ll take Naruto with him, though, since just walking through this place seems to freak him out. He wishes Sora was here; he could count on Sora to come with him. Kairi, too.

What are they doing now? Has Kairi told Sora that Riku left yet—is Sora angry at him, or is he jealous? Riku bites down on a grin. He can picture Sora’s face in his mind when he realizes that Riku is off at _ninja school_.

Then he doesn’t need to cover a grin, because he realizes that Sora’s probably still stuck in bed, too, and it’s his fault.

He’s sort of glad that Iruka hasn’t started teaching him how to hit anything yet. On the other hand, he _wants_ to learn; he wants to get better. It was just a hobby back on the Islands, a way to pass the time (and, okay, to show off a bit, and to impress Kairi)… But now, he figures that his sword fighting will be way more important than history or math.

“Hey.” Naruto elbows him in the ribs.

Riku blinks, then shoots him an irritated look. “What?”

“We’re here.” He nods to the house in front of them.

Riku eyes it. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as all the other houses: where some of them look like they might fall apart if he nudges them with his foot, this one looks like someone lives here and takes care of it. A lot of someones: it’s bigger than Riku’s house back on the Islands, about the size of Kairi’s.

“Go knock on the door,” Riku says, shoving Naruto toward the house.

Naruto is immovable as a brick wall. “ _You_ go. You’re the one with the scroll.”

“He’s _your_ teammate. Besides, I talked to my uncle, it’s your turn.” Riku is a _pro_ at all versions of “one-two-three-not-it,” including “I did it last time.” He’s _basically_ got a little brother and sister, so he’s got loads more practice than Naruto.

“I knocked!”

“And then _hid behind me_. I don’t think that counts.”

“What are you two doing?” Sasuke asks, looking like he isn’t sure whether he should venture outside or go back inside the house and pretend he isn’t home.

“Looking for you,” Riku says, quickly walking over to Sasuke, whose expression doesn’t change. Riku digs the roll of paper—or, okay, the _scroll_ —out of his pocket. “Kakashi wanted me to give this to you.”

Sasuke stares at the scroll. Snatches it out of Riku’s hand. _Then_ , after looking at Riku expectantly, Sasuke says, “You delivered it,” with such obvious irritation and _dismissal_ that Riku really just wants to punch him.

Riku isn’t _used_ to being insulted directly to his face. He’s definitely unused to people insulting him without being told off by his friends—Sora or Kairi were _always_ around, and always willing to defend him. Of course, he returned the favor, the few times someone tried to pick a fight with one or the other of them. That’s what friends are for.

Naruto’s his roommate, not his friend, and makes no effort to scold Sasuke for his tone.

On top of that, there’s the part that Riku was thinking about earlier—he doesn’t have friends like Sasuke. For that matter, he doesn’t even know _of_ anybody like Sasuke. Plenty of people back home thought they were better than Riku, but usually they were older. Riku didn’t have to deal with them often, because their lives tended not to intersect his much. That was the way everyone liked it, and when Riku absolutely had to interact with those people, he tried to keep it as short as possible.

Sasuke, on the other hand, is Kakashi’s _student_. One of three. Riku guesses he’ll be seeing the guy pretty often, and so far, he isn’t thrilled about that. A punch early on just might sort out the kid’s attitude—or might get him in trouble with his uncle, on his second day in Konoha.

It’s probably best to just let it go. Unfortunately.

“Kakashi said to wait for you to read it,” Riku says, and because he can’t punch Sasuke, he says it slowly, like he thinks Sasuke’s an idiot.

The look Sasuke gives him for it makes him feel almost as good as if he’d actually swung. Not quite, but almost.

“Soooo,” Naruto says, edging towards Sasuke a bit, “what’s it say, huh?”

Sasuke glares at him—not the playful sort of glare that Sora gave Riku sometimes, or the eyeroll-glare-hands-on-hip combo that Kairi sent both of them. It’s almost the exact same expression that was on his face after Riku spoke. Not for the first time, Riku has to wonder about what sort of friends the two of them are. _If_ they’re friends at all. Like he told Kakashi, he really doesn’t think they are, but maybe ninja friendships are wildly different from ordinary friendships.

Sasuke doesn’t tell Naruto to back off—that might be where the friendship comes in—but he does angle the scroll so that only he can read it. His eyes travel quickly over the paper. Either he’s only scanning it, or he reads a whole lot faster than Riku does.

After he gets to the bottom, he rolls it up. “There. I read it.” Riku wishes he could take the paper back from him and smack him with it.

He’s fairly sure he didn’t have such violent impulses back on the Islands. A few times, he wanted to haul off and hit someone, but twice in the same conversation… If this keeps up, when he leaves Konoha, he’ll have to stay at his grandparents’ house for a week just to make sure he gets rid of all the ninja contamination. Considering the fact that his grandfather was the first person to hand him something short, shiny, and sharp, he isn’t sure how well that will work.

Naruto steps closer to Sasuke. “What’s the jutsu?”

“It’s a fire jutsu.” Sasuke packs even more irritation and dismissal into four words than he put into three.

“That’s right, you like those.” Naruto sounds like he’s trying to start a conversation, and a little bit like he’d really rather not. Still, the look on his face is hopeful, all big eyes and the hint of a smile, like he’s just waiting for Sasuke to acknowledge him— _yes, I do like those, you remembered my favorite kind of jutsu, good job_.

Sasuke says none of that. Sasuke shrugs and pockets the scroll, to Riku’s disappointment.

“I’m not hanging out with you two today,” Sasuke says, looking pointedly at Riku, who really doesn’t mind. Naruto, on the other hand, looks a little disappointed. Hurt, maybe.

“Let’s go see if Kakashi’s still awake,” Riku says, nudging Naruto. “He might have another one.”

Sasuke twitches at that; Riku smirks at him and doesn’t bother trying to hide or stop it. It’s not _nice_ , but he’s rapidly discovering that, without Sora or Kairi around, he’s not really a nice person. Oblivious, Naruto grins.

“Yeah, I bet he does!”

Sasuke doesn’t say goodbye before he closes his front door and starts walking away. Unfortunately, as Sasuke lives in the ghost-town section of Konoha, there’s apparently only one way from his house to anywhere else in the village.

Riku walks several steps behind Naruto and Sasuke, watching them and trying to figure out if this is what would have happened if he ever spent a whole lot of time around Tidus and no one else. Maybe he would be a jerk like Sasuke, too—though he doubts it; if there were trophies for Being a Jerk, surely Sasuke has the biggest. Riku on his worst day isn’t anywhere _near_ as bad as Sasuke has been since he got here.

Maybe he’s just seeing Sasuke at his worst; maybe, sometime soon, Sasuke will have a good day and Riku will realize that his desire to punch that smug face was just a phase.

Despite Sasuke imitating a wall—a wall that insults people who talk at it—Naruto keeps trying to start a conversation. Admittedly, he does keep hitting incredibly annoying pitches, especially when he gets too caught up in his story, and he just keeps _talking_ and _talking_ … It’s too bad Naruto doesn’t have a ninja-Wakka; even a ninja-Selphie would probably help calm him down. A little. Maybe-sometimes.

…Actually, Riku can’t remember a single time Selphie calmed Tidus down. A lot of the opposite, really. Maybe it’s for the best that Naruto doesn’t have a Selphie around, then.

Once the three of them get into the part of the village with _people_ in it, Sasuke ditches them about as fast as possible. Literally, they are standing in front of the gate, Naruto’s mouth open to ask Sasuke something, and Sasuke _vaults_ up the nearest wall and is away over the rooftops.

Riku rolls his eyes; if Sora and Kairi ever visit, he’ll have to warn them to just stay away from Sasuke. Sora would get upset by his attitude, and after Sora got upset, Kairi would be after his blood.

“You walk slow,” Naruto says, turning and squinting at Riku.

Riku shrugs, not bothering to explain that he hung back on purpose.

Naruto frowns, but doesn’t comment. Instead, he launches back into whatever story he was telling Sasuke. Riku tunes him out, but because he isn’t a jerk like Sasuke, he doesn’t _say_ he couldn’t care less about…whatever the story is about.

Fortunately for both of them, Naruto shuts up before they return to Kakashi’s apartment, so Riku doesn’t disillusion him. Riku knocks on the door this time, and is greeted with a more-awake Kakashi.

“Oh, you’re back already. That was fast.” Kakashi’s voice is expressionless, giving nothing away. Is he happy? Disappointed? Angry? _Who would know_. The visible 33% of his face is equally inscrutable.

“Sasuke didn’t want to hang out,” Riku says. “So we didn’t stick around too long.”

Kakashi blinks at him, then looks at Naruto as if to confirm. Riku clenches his teeth and tries not to otherwise react. Sora’s aunts and uncles all seemed to think the world of him, and even the mayor’s sister never treats Kairi the way Kakashi is treating Riku.

Kakashi doesn’t know how to be family, he reminds himself. Kakashi only knows how to be a teacher.

A shitty teacher, the uncharitable part of Riku observes, because isn’t his whole thing about teamwork? Which is _very much lacking_ between Naruto and Sasuke?

The charitable part of Riku points out this is new for Kakashi, too. He had Riku dropped on him just like he dropped Konoha on Riku, and he’s trying his best. Probably. If Riku pictures his mother reminding him to be sympathetic, it’s slightly easier to not be irritated at his uncle.

Naruto apparently confirms Riku’s testimony while Riku is cooling off, because when he elbows Riku to get his attention, the subject has evidently changed. His whisper of “munny!” is too loud for Kakashi to possibly miss, and sure enough, in the time it takes Riku to turn to Kakashi, Kakashi has already pulled out a bright blue purse and is holding it out for Riku to take.

The purse is soft and smells a little flowery—not enough to have sunk into the material, and not unpleasant, either, just unfamiliar and more than Riku is used to. For him, perfume itself is unusual; the girls he hung out with never used it, and neither did his mother.

It smells a bit like some of the flowers he passed by on the way to Sasuke’s house, when he’s trying to place it. Not a bad scent in small doses.

There’s also some kind of cooked meat (not fish) smell, but he can’t tell if that’s from the purse or the apartment.

“I noticed you didn’t pack a wallet,” Kakashi says.

The purse—it’s definitely a coinpurse, definitely not a wallet—has a wave print on it, on further inspection. It probably wasn’t just lying around. That explains the perfume, too, and possibly the cooked meat: Kakashi probably bought it today, either after waking them up or while Riku and Naruto were heading to and from Sasuke’s place.

Huh. Riku doesn’t know what to think about that. He settles for a “Thanks.”

Kakashi’s eye crinkles. “You’re welcome.”

Riku turns the purse over in his hands, examining the outside first, then opening it. There’s some munny inside, entirely unfamiliar to him—slips of paper and metal pieces. Without warning, Naruto grabs the purse and starts rifling through it.

“Hey, what’re you doing? That’s mine!” Riku attempts to retrieve the purse, but Naruto turns away, shielding it with his body.

“You owe me, remember?” he says, tossing it back to Riku a few seconds later. Riku scowls and checks. There is _some_ munny left—hard to check at a glance how much, when he’s unfamiliar with all of it—but he has no way of knowing if Naruto took more than his fair share.

He doesn’t think Naruto would do that, though, and definitely not in front of Kakashi.

“You could’ve _asked_ ,” he says. Naruto sticks his tongue out. “I was going to pay you back.”

“Don’t start a fight in the hallway,” Kakashi says, not sounding at all worried or surprised. If anything, he seems amused. “My neighbors might get mad. Again. You two missed quite an argument earlier. Why don’t you go outside?” Naruto starts to protest that they aren’t _fighting_ , just _talking_ , but Riku gets the point.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

They haven’t gone more than a couple feet when Kakashi speaks again.

“We’ve got a mission tomorrow, Naruto. You need to be ready tomorrow morning, at six.”

Naruto squints at him. “Six?”

“Yes.”

Naruto nods. “Got it.” After Kakashi disappears back into his tiny apartment, he adds to Riku, “That means he’ll show up around noon.”

Riku frowns. “Is his clock broken? Can’t he just look outside?” It can’t be that he always sleeps in late, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to drop Riku’s things off this morning.

Rolling his eyes, Naruto dismisses Riku’s questions. “Nah, he’s just always late, that’s all. Anyway, I guess that means there’s no training today…”

“Speak for yourself,” Riku says, kicking the ground a bit. “I should practice those seal things.”

Actually, he wants to go buy food that isn’t ramen and that he doesn’t have to share with Naruto, and then he wants to swim in the river. Naruto doesn’t need to know any of that, though.

Pulling the most put-upon face Riku’s seen since the last time Kairi’s mom told her to clean up her room, Naruto says, “That’s not _training_ , that’s _homework_ ,” before hurriedly saying his goodbyes and taking off, apparently under the assumption that wanting to do homework would rub off if he stuck around. Or maybe he thinks Riku’s going to try to rope _him_ into helping with seals.

As if Riku can’t spot a classic C-to-D student, after spending so much time with Tidus and Selphie. (They weren’t _dumb_ , they just didn’t often apply themselves. Riku can see a lot of that in Naruto, although he’s not necessarily sold on “not dumb” just yet.)

Well, Riku doesn’t care. He takes a moment to reorient himself, then turns in the direction of the strongest _sweat-cooked meat-spices_ smells and starts walking. If Naruto thinks he’s doing homework, he’ll probably have the apartment to himself long enough to cook a meal and eat it, if he hurries. Then he can head back to the river, and if he feels like it, he’ll practice those seals on the way.


	5. Riku Learns Two Jutsu; Offscreen, the Chuunin Exams Begin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for non-explicit mentions of violence, death, and war, and a heads-up: as we get closer to the Chuunin Exams finals, these mentions will become a lot more explicit.

Remedial ninja training is annoying.

Riku makes a face at his leftovers from breakfast, spinning in the microwave only an hour and a half after he originally cooked the fish. He tries not to dwell on his first official _lesson_ as a student-ninja and how badly it went, but it’s that or mindlessly watch the timer on the microwave tick down.

The lesson started badly and got worse from there. Riku only remembers half of the hand seals, so Mr. Iruka made him practice all of them for the first half hour while he graded papers. Then, when Mr. Iruka decided that he’d suffered enough, Riku got to learn about weapons—normally something he would enjoy. Except Mr. Iruka didn’t even let Riku touch the knives he had in the pouch on his thigh; the teacher just showed him pictures and told him the names and uses of each weapon, along with their benefits and downsides. Bored ninjas apparently came up with new, weird-looking blades (sometimes attached to something else, like the four or so variations of ‘blade on a stick,’ and the ‘blade on a chain’ that Riku eyed suspiciously, after that one broke and nearly stabbed him on the way to Sasuke’s house), because there were entirely too many of those, even for Riku.

Plus, the pictures came with the ninja-writing; whatever doubts Riku had about whether he just misinterpreted the food labels curl up and die when he sees those on _classroom handouts_. Even if ninja-teachers would give those sorts of worksheets in code, he doesn’t think Mr. Iruka would do that to him right now. Mr. Iruka’s been very clear that they are focusing on _one thing at a time, Riku; once you’re proficient at this, then we can move on to something else_.

Faced with the writing a second time, Riku gets another opportunity to wrestle with what it means for his future, which means he has to first _wrestle with his future_. 

Part of him wants to leave, damn whatever he’s said to his uncle and everyone else. He’s promised to stick around, sure, but he hasn’t _sworn_ on anything, or to anything, and he’s just told his uncle, not Mr. Iruka or the Hokage. He thinks maybe everything will get more serious once he’s actually learned enough to be a genin like Naruto, but he’s not toally sure. All he’s learned so far is that “genin” is the next step up from “Academy student,” and everyone treats the genin like they’re young and dumb ninjas, but _not_ like they’re just children pretending to be something they’re not.

So, his working theory? All the stuff Kakashi said about promising to protect the village, and being here to do it and all that, will kick in once he becomes a genin. The easy solution would be “don’t become a genin,” except that Riku’s already a year older than most of them when they graduate. He’s not sure how long they’ll _let_ him stay a student, and he’s pretty sure there’s a whole lot more he wants to learn that he won’t be able to even find out about until people stop treating him like a student.

Part of him _really really_ wants to just take off, as soon as he’s no longer an active threat to his friends. That part of him has been growing, bit by bit, ever since Mr. Iruka told him that it was unlikely he would break Sora’s arm that way again.

That part of Riku is being held off by the rest of him, which is still all shiny-eyed and awestruck at the thought of _learning how to be a ninja_. Right now, he can grapple down the desire to flee by reminding himself that Mr. Iruka said he would learn basic chakra control exercises. Once his chakra control is better, then he won’t be any threat at all to his friends.

That’s when he’s going to have to decide whether he wants to stick it out and become a ninja, knowing that he won’t be able to go back home to visit, or whether he wants to cut and run. 

For right now, though, his decision is simpler: he is _not_ postponing visiting home until he learns how to ninja-write—he just doesn’t have time for that, not if he wants to see Sora and Kairi again before he’s old. Since he can very much see Mr. Iruka or even Kakashi making his leaving contingent on his writing ability, Riku therefore decides that he just isn’t going to tell anyone that he doesn’t know how to write, and if they figure that out, he definitely isn’t going to tell them that he doesn’t plan on learning.

If he thinks about it too hard, he can see an endless spiral of things he’ll need to learn before he can leave, spinning off into an unfathomable darkness that stands between him and going back to the Islands. It’s enough to make him seriously consider the merits of just taking off right now.

He has to stay at least until he has control, though. He owes Sora that much.

It doesn’t help that he has homework: memorize _all_ the hand seals. As incentive, Mr. Iruka promised to start teaching him “ninjutsu” as soon as he could do all of them. Riku’s looking forward to it. Surely, by the time he’s mastered a cool move or five, he’ll know how not to break Sora’s arm.

Though, even if he does decide to leave, he might stick around for a bit, just to kick Sasuke’s butt a few times. Sora would understand.

He should be practicing his hand seals at all times, but he isn’t worried. He got half last night, so he figures he can memorize the other half tonight and start learning jutsu tomorrow. Mr. Iruka also wants him to run up and down the stairs of the apartment building five times in a row, to build stamina or endurance or whatever. Riku plans to do that either tonight, when not too many people are around to watch and laugh, or tomorrow morning, before Naruto wakes up.

The whole exercise seems weird to Riku, but then, there aren’t any long stretches of beach here. Mr. Iruka even looked mildly impressed when Riku mentioned running that route back home, before he said that running up stairs shouldn’t be difficult for Riku, then. He’s right, but going up and down multiple times, not even racing somebody, doesn’t sound like fun.

At least he has the apartment to himself for the day. Naruto had to get up with Riku this morning, and he complained the whole time. Not that he got up on his own; Kakashi arrived with the bucket of water he’d threatened Riku with. _That_ woke Naruto up quickly, and prompted his complaints, all directed at Kakashi. Riku still wonders if his uncle stayed because he worried that Naruto would go back to bed (not very smart, in Riku’s opinion: the bed’s still wet) or for the free breakfast that Riku made him.

Riku pulls his leftovers out of the beeping microwave. Reheated fish isn’t as good as freshly cooked, but it’s hot and not instant ramen, unlike any of his other options for early lunch.

Armed with his plate in one hand and chopsticks in the other, Riku sits down at the only chair in the room. That’s going to have to change; if Kakashi is serious about Riku staying here (and, after seeing where his uncle lives, _Riku_ is serious about staying here rather than there), some of the accommodations are going to need updating. It says some really depressing things, that Naruto’s managed to get to twelve without needing a second chair, but that’s changed now.

And Chair #2 is _not_ going to come out of Riku’s allowance.

There’s nothing Riku can do about the lack of space. It’s a problem. One bedroom, one bathroom, a hall, a kitchen, and a room that’s half living room and half dining room is apparently liveable for one smallish kid, but Riku’s luggage and mattress are taking up about a third of Naruto’s bedroom. How long _that’s_ going to work out is anyone’s guess; probably longer, if Riku can figure out how to get along with his roommate.

Some positives: Naruto has several plants, all in really good condition. The rest of the apartment shows signs of half-hearted maintenance at best, but there isn’t even a hint of wilted leaves. They smell nice, too; not very fragrant, none of them flowers, but the apartment has a hint of soil and green things. Riku’s only done it a few times, but so far, he _likes_ walking through the door to that smell. It isn’t one he noticed on the Islands; there, the lingering sea-scent overpowered most everything else, especially on windy or stormy days. While Naruto’s apartment isn’t even close to smelling like home, Riku thinks he can get used to it.

Not only that, but the quality of the plants tells him that Naruto _can_ take care of things. He isn’t a lost cause. Riku will just need to work out how to present it. He really doubts the Hokage or Mr. Iruka just tossed a plant at Naruto one day and said, “Here, take care of this or else,” but that’s pretty much how Kakashi offloaded Riku on Naruto. So. Backtracking is in order.

Maybe, to start off, Riku can do most of the chores, and get Naruto accustomed to what a clean apartment smells like, feels like, looks like. Once Naruto knows the difference, then Riku can show him how to help out. (Come to think of it, that’s pretty much exactly how his mother taught him how to cook; maybe, while Riku’s at it, he can also teach the kid how to cook. He won’t be around forever, after all, and if he doesn’t teach Naruto this stuff, it’s really obvious that no one else will.)

To get a sense of what he’s working with, Riku sticks his head in the bathroom. Winces. The first time he tries to clean anything in there, it’s going to be…godawful is the only word that comes to mind.

He’ll have to talk Kakashi into lending him a mask, just for that day. And heavy-duty cleaner, because he doubts Naruto has ever gotten behind the toilet. Riku hasn’t noticed it the last few days, since all the smells have been new and strange, but today, standing in the bathroom, he can pick out sweat and mustiness. Thankfully, no mold-smell; that’s a bit beyond what he can deal with.

The chores will be the big problem, with a long-term solution. The little—but more pervasive—problem is that Naruto is _messy_. There’s no organization _anywhere._ The drawers in the bathroom have toilet paper rolls, unopened boxes of soap-bars, and assorted bottles (he suspects the cologne was someone’s idea of a gag gift, as he’s never smelled anything like that on Naruto), including hair gel (again, Naruto doesn’t use any). The kitchen has been similarly “organized,” although that’s less of a problem because Naruto simply doesn’t have much. A few plates, a few bowls, multiple sets of chopsticks—not a single fork or knife, although there are things that look a bit like spoons—and package after package of instant ramen.

There’s also a half-empty box of cereal. Riku opens it and eyes the _very_ sugary-smelling, oddly-colored puffballs. If this, the milk, and ramen are all that Naruto eats, no wonder he’s so short.

In the living/dining room, there are scrolls scattered everywhere, most wrinkled or creased like Mr. Iruka has cautioned him against. There are weapons, too, but all the ones that Riku finds are broken or clearly made wrong, like throwing stars with only three points or knives without handles. He takes a minute that turns into twelve just…sorting everything out. One pile for broken pointy things, one for defective ones, one for the scrolls, and a fourth pile for random objects like socks and old toys that turn up, buried underneath the mess.

Once there are piles, Riku tackles the two he knows what to do with: first, he rolls up all the scrolls, and stacks them neatly on the table. Absently, he finishes off his lunch, then cleans his plate and chopsticks and puts them away. Then he turns on the “random stuff” pile.

Toys or tools that are obviously broken go with the broken knives and other weapons. Clothing goes in a fifth pile, for Riku to deal with as soon as he gets an answer to his laundry question. There are further chopsticks and trash that he turns up at this point, which he just tosses out wholesale; Naruto, even with a new roommate, does not need more than a dozen chopsticks.

Once he’s taken care of all of that, the room looks a bit brighter and smells fresher. It even seems bigger, although that’s probably just a trick of the eye.

With one accomplishment under his belt (and now edging into half an hour, although Riku’s not paying any attention to the time by this point), he ventures into the bedroom. In addition to scrolls and weaponry, it’s full of Naruto’s laundry. (And, of course, Riku’s mattress and bags.) He will definitely have to do something about that, before he trips and bangs his head on a wall.

For now, he sorts the stuff, same as he did in the living room. Laundry, weapons, scrolls, random stuff. Scrolls get rolled up and placed on top of Naruto’s dresser—which Riku clears off, first shoving all the trash and dirty dishes to one side so he can put down the scrolls, then picking it all up and taking it into the kitchen.

Plates go in the sink, ramen cups, wrappers, cartons, and utensils in the trash can.

Returning to the bedroom, Riku picks out all the broken weapons and moves those into the living room pile. Ditto the defective weapons. _Those_ piles are now a tripping hazard, but the best Riku can come up with is moving them as far from the doors as possible. (If that means the defective weapons are now directly under the window, where someone like his uncle sneaking in might get poked by them, it’s _totally unintentional_.)

Normally, as a thirteen-year-old and the first of his friend-group to enter puberty, Riku subscribes heavily to the sniff test. Since his nose is more sensitive than most boys’, his mother has never complained. He doesn’t bother with Naruto’s dirty laundry, though. If it’s on the floor, or any piece of furniture, it’s tainted and belongs with the rest of the dirty clothes.

That pile looks like it might be capable of devouring Naruto without anyone noticing. Riku heaves a sigh. He can’t do _everything_. Instead of even trying with that monster, he deals with the random stuff pile, same as before.

The laundry-monster takes up a quarter of the room, when he’s done; his own things and Naruto’s furniture easily fill half of the remaining space. The change isn’t as great as in the living/dining room, but it’s a step closer to “liveable.”

His good deed for the day finished—really, that should tide him over for the rest of the _week_ —Riku investigates the scrolls Naruto left lying around in his room, opening one at a time and looking at it before rolling it back up, putting it down, and starting on the next.

Like he figured, he can’t read any of the weird lines, but there are two (of about ten in here, with another half-dozen on the table in the other room; Naruto doesn’t actually have that many) with diagrams. Riku doesn’t know what the diagrams are _of_ , but he takes some guesses. One looks like a human body with lines going through it, while the other one has hand-seals. Riku rolls that one up and sticks it with his things.

Naruto probably won’t miss it, and Riku can use it to practice his seals. Maybe, if he gets lucky, it’s a ninjutsu scroll, and he can practice whatever move it is here once he figures it out. He doubts that it’s a very good jutsu, since Naruto just left it lying around, but practice is practice and knowing more won’t hurt.

With that sorted out and the apartment no longer giving Riku hives when he thinks about it, he might as well explore Konoha. There’s a somewhat-involved process before he can leave, though, since he has to empty out his backpack to do it.

Well. He doesn’t _have_ to, but he’s got a half-formed idea in his head of what he wants to do, and he’ll need some supplies for it. He stacks up his clothes and other possessions beside his duffel bags on the mattress. Then he packs a pair of swim-trunks, his knife, and his coin-purse into the backpack. The plan is to wander around until he finds the river, swim for a bit, maybe practice the hand-seals if he’s really bored, and be back at the apartment in time for dinner. If he gets hungry or something catches his eye, that’s what his purse is for. 

Being on another world isn’t really interesting without Sora and Kairi. As he walks out of the apartment and down the stairs, he spots five things—including the view of the village—that one of his friends would love. Sora would want to explore everything and meet everyone; Kairi would want to explore with him, and pick up souvenirs and talk about how different the buildings look, and maybe pick flowers, too.

Riku doesn’t know what he would have done. Tried to learn jutsus? Collected the cool-looking weapons?

He doesn’t have the munny to get weapons. No one will teach him any jutsus yet. He wouldn’t mind doing something like Kakashi’s test again, he just doesn’t know anyone willing to do it with him. And he doesn’t want to lose a second time to cotton-candy hair—Sakura, Sakura, Sakura, for all he knows, he’ll slip up the next time he sees her and _call her_ Cotton-Candy Hair, and then Riku will never have to worry about hand-seals or being lonely again because he’ll be dead.

The part of the bell test where he beat Sasuke was fun. Too bad it isn’t likely to happen again.

///

He walks back into the apartment a few hours later, hair still wet from the river and his trunks soaking the bottom of his backpack, knife and purse carefully stowed in his pockets to avoid water damage. Naruto and Kakashi are sitting at the table, Naruto slurping up instant ramen and Kakashi staring forlornly at the clean plate in front of him. 

“There you are,” his uncle says, smiling. “Did you have fun?”

“Yeah.” Riku dumps the backpack on the floor and, after Kakashi clears his throat, remembers to kick off his shoes.

Naruto very carefully puts his chopsticks down. His hands look a little like they’re shaking, and when Riku notices that, he also notices that Naruto’s eyes look bright and wet.

“You didn’t have to clean,” he says, in a small voice. “I wasn’t going to make you or anything.”

Riku has walked into the middle of parent-child screaming matches with less loaded silences than the one that descends right then. He looks from Naruto to Kakashi and back, lost at sea with this situation.

Kakashi gives nothing away, but his eye isn’t crinkled even a little, and his book isn’t anywhere to be seen. So. Something serious is going on.

“I know,” Riku says, slowly, both to buy time and because he _really_ doesn’t want to make Naruto cry. “I didn’t do it because I _had_ to. It’s just. I’m living here now, too, right? So I might as well pull my own weight.”

That starts to work, but by the end of his statement, he’s said something horrifically wrong, because Naruto’s eyes go from “wet” to “brimming with tears,” and his lip starts to tremble.

This is so _unfair_ ; all Riku did was clean up, he doesn’t deserve _this_. He runs a hand through his hair, yanking on a tangle viciously enough to _hear_ his hair snap. He doesn’t feel better, after, or have a clue what to do.

“I think,” Kakashi breaks in, and Riku has never been so grateful in his life, “that what Naruto means is ‘thank you.’”

Naruto jerks his head to look at Kakashi, and the tears spill over, down his cheeks, over his birthmarks. Then he turns back to Riku. “Thank you.” He sounds—sincere, weirdly. Riku would’ve expected resentful, maybe, or sullen, with how it seems like Kakashi just got through yelling at Naruto when he walked in. _Riku_ has given his fair share of insincere apologies under similar circumstances.

Naruto’s not apologizing, though. Which is good, because there’s nothing to be sorry for.

“You’re welcome.”

There’s a moment, after that; a frisson, where the air is still tense and Riku’s not sure what will happen next. He’s not sure why _this_ happened, or what he can do to prevent it from happening again. Naruto looks at Riku with those big, watery blue eyes, tear-tracks on his face, while Kakashi watches both them, totally impassive.

It passes.

“Where’ve you been?” Naruto asks. After Kakashi nudges his ramen cup, he eats another mouthful, this time without slurping.

“Swimming.” Riku walks toward the table, spots two empty noodle cups, and wonders if it’s safe to throw them away or if Naruto will cry again if he does. To be on the safe side, he waits for now; if they’re still there once Kakashi’s gone, though, Riku’s tossing them.

Naruto doesn’t say anything at that, though he does look at Riku funny. Apparently, ninjas don’t swim that much, even though they have a river right in their village.

“Naruto has some news for you,” Kakashi says. His pointed tone is worse than a kick beneath the table, from the way Naruto jerks and straightens up, looking a little panicked.

“I’m going to be in the chuunin exams,” he says with a grin, more subdued than usual but still obviously pleased. “It’s gonna be so awesome, I’m gonna kick ass—”

“What’re the chuunin exams?”

Naruto’s face falls, and it’s Riku’s turn to panic, thinking he’s going to cry again. Thankfully, Kakashi answers, explaining how ninjas go up in rank while Naruto finishes his ramen. (He throws all three cups away himself, thank Leviathan and all the lesser deities.)

The chuunin exams sound…complicated. First, the jounin-instructor needs to approve their team, then the genin are sent to wherever the exams are held. They’re held twice a year, though it’s really more like once, because villages don’t send genin to villages they aren’t friendly with, and anyway, it’s even more like once every two or three years, because most jounin-instructors wait until the exams are at _their village_ rather than just an ally’s before approving their teams. Once they get there, the genin have to take a series of tests to see if they’re good enough to graduate to chuunin rank.

Hearing Kakashi say things like “will be tested on their teamwork, skill at subterfuge, and fighting ability,” Riku has to wonder what the hell _Naruto_ was thinking, agreeing to this test.

From the look on Naruto’s face, the kid doesn’t even know what subterfuge _is_.

“It’s a good assessment of the skills of the genin,” Kakashi says, which Riku translates as _they won’t pass, but I’ll know what they need to improve_ , and then Kakashi finishes, “of all the villages.”

That sounds like spying to Riku, although a weird sort of spying, because it isn’t sending Konoha’s ninjas into other villages so much as…telling other villages to send their ninjas to Konoha, so that Konoha can evaluate whether they’re _good_ ninjas or not. The other villages, apparently, trust Konoha with this job—or at least, Konoha’s allies do. Presumably, Konoha also trusts the other villages with it when Konoha _isn’t_ hosting the chuunin exams.

That line of thought leads to the question of whether it’s the genin who’re supposed to be spying on the other genin, or if there are other people to do that. The jounin-instructors? But really, they should be focusing on helping their teams pass the test…

Either way, whoever agreed to let Naruto’s team compete probably didn’t realize that a) Naruto is about as subtle as a wooden sword to the head; b) Sasuke wouldn’t know what teamwork was if _it_ was a wooden sword hitting him on the head; and c) Riku’s guessing that Sakura isn’t great at fighting, to round out the team’s weaknesses. Or maybe she sucks at teamwork as much as Sasuke does; she didn’t really work with her team to beat Riku, after all.

Even Sasuke eventually worked with Naruto, even if it was too late, so it isn’t quite fair to think that he doesn’t know what teamwork _is_. He just really obviously doesn’t care for it. He might change for the chuunin exams, though, if he doesn’t realize that not even Kakashi thinks their team’s gonna pass.

Whatever. It doesn’t concern Riku. He doesn’t plan to take the exams himself, not anytime soon, maybe not ever. “So Naruto’s going to be out of here a lot,” he summarizes. “Anything else?” Like an explanation for why Kakashi had to go and make Naruto almost _cry_ , right before Riku walked in and finished the job?

No such luck. “The last stage of the exam is a series of elimination rounds,” Kakashi says, “that the public can watch.”

“So I can go.” And pick things up. He can’t learn a whole fighting style from just seeing it once, but he can learn tricks or moves; he’s good at that. He learned sword-fighting from _books_.

Kakashi’s eye crinkles, as if he approves of Riku’s thoughts. “Yes. I’m sure Naruto would appreciate your support.”

Riku would probably have answered that with something sarcastic, that morning; right now, though, that feels too mean. Naruto doesn’t look on the edge of tears anymore, but now Riku’s seen him like that. The image won’t go away. Riku says, “Of course I’ll come, if Naruto wants me there.”

Naruto sucks his lip between his teeth and that’s the wrong thing to say _again_ , because his eyes go shiny-bright. “Of course I want you there,” he says in the same voice he used when Riku just walked in. Then he seems to recover, and grins. “It’s gonna be awesome, just you watch!”

Riku can see Sora saying that; grinning the same way, similar blue eyes just as excited. He has a moment of vertigo, and then his brain gets all twisted up and he thinks about _making Sora cry_ , and then he thinks about the last time he saw Sora cry, when Riku broke his arm, and—

“Yeah,” Riku says, sounding distant even to his own ears. Swallows. Says, “I’ll be there,” and walks out of the room, shuts himself in the bathroom. He doubts Naruto or Kakashi will follow him there.

Through the door—or the wall, maybe—he hears Naruto talking to Kakashi. He can’t hear the responses, but even with only one side, he can make out that they aren’t talking about him. Good. Naruto’s not crying, either, which is even better.

Absently, Riku opens the window, letting in fresh air. Someone’s cooking meat nearby. There isn’t a hint of salt water. Konoha isn’t even remotely near an ocean.

He shouldn’t have agreed to come. He could have just never sparred with Sora, and he doesn’t have to spar with anyone else, either. There are other things he could have done. Fished, for example, or built boats, or thrown himself into his studies. Probably no one would have been willing to take him on as an apprentice, but he could have found _something_.

Then, he would still be on the islands, with Sora and Kairi, not stuck here with Naruto, like someone mashed Tidus and Sora together. Not stuck here with stuck-up Sasuke, and Sakura, and his uncle.

He has questions for Kakashi, and his uncle is right there in the other room. Riku could start with the boring ones, to get Naruto out of the room before anything potentially embarrassing comes up. Instead of leaving, though, Riku sinks down, sitting with his back to the wall under the window, right next to the shower. All the surfaces in here are cold. _Konoha_ is cold, compared to the Islands.

What are Sora and Kairi doing, right this minute? It’s dinnertime, or close to it, so they’re probably eating with their families. Maybe Sora’s mom let him out of his room so he could eat with his parents, or maybe they all ate in his room.

He probably needs help eating. Unlike Riku, Sora never made any effort to work with his off hand. Riku can’t do much with his besides throw a decent punch, but he could probably manage to eat with just his left. Unless he has to use _chopsticks_ , of course.

Riku’s mom is probably eating dinner, too. She’s all alone in their house, now. Riku pulls his legs up to his chest. He can’t stop thinking about it. Did she close his bedroom door, so she won’t be reminded? Does she sit in there sometimes and think about him?

Does she cry, at night, not because Riku’s—not because _Sho_ left, but because _Riku_ did?

She told him to leave. She sent the letter. She didn’t even mention it to him, beforehand or after. She basically pushed him out the door. She loves him, he knows she loves him, but she had wanted him to go, and she wouldn’t come with him. He _asked_ , he reminds himself now; she has to know that he loves her, because he asked her to come with him and she was the one to say no.

What did she tell the neighbors about his leaving? Whatever it was, they probably don’t believe her. Riku can’t remember very many of the stories they told about him when he and his mom first got to the island, but he remembers thinking that they were weird and silly. The sort of stories Sora (and later Kairi) might make up for fun.

He misses his family. Not even gone for a week and he misses them. He hasn’t seen Sora in a _month_. There have been times, before, when he didn’t see them for almost a week; when one of them (and their parents) went to one of the bigger islands to shop, or for a big event like a carnival or a celebration, fireworks, rides, traveling attractions. Some of the time, they went together, but Kairi’s mom was mayor so she couldn’t leave often, and Riku’s mom couldn’t usually afford it.

He didn’t miss them like this, then. He used to be so sure they would see each other again, he could just be excited for them when they left; he always wanted to tell or hear the stories about the big islands, or whatever the event was, but he’s never before felt like curling up in a ball and crying just because he couldn’t see Sora or Kairi for a week.

Maybe it’s the distance. Maybe it’s that Konoha is so _different_. Maybe it’s because, once again, Riku is the odd one out, the one without friends, only this time he doesn’t even have his mother to talk to.

He curls a hand around Kairi’s pendant. He doesn’t cry.

Even if Sora can’t be here with him, because he broke Sora’s arm, he wishes Kairi had come. He should have asked her. This is another world; it _could_ be hers, although all she remembers about hers is “lots of flowers,” and Konoha’s a little lacking, florally. Still. Kairi’s adopted and the mayor is always so busy that she barely spends time with her daughter. Kairi _could_ have come with Riku, and then Kakashi couldn’t have shoved the two of them off on Naruto.

They wouldn’t both _fit_.

So they’d be stuck with Sasuke, probably, unless Sakura has a lot of spare room. Riku can’t imagine that she has more than Sasuke, with his whole empty neighborhood. That’s…not better, but at least his house is big enough that they could all pretend they weren’t being forced to share. Kairi could learn to be a ninja, too— _she_ wouldn’t have forgotten half the hand seals by the next day, and she’d help Riku. She might even figure out how to read the squiggles of the ninja-writing. Kairi’s awfully smart, and does well at basically everything.

That would leave Sora all by himself, though. Riku makes a face. That isn’t really any better, and if he has to choose, he’ll pick being alone himself over making Sora or Kairi be alone, any day. He can handle it better. They’re younger, and they’ve always had friends. Riku knows how to rely on only himself; he can take care of himself without anybody else’s help. They really can’t.

If Sora were the one stuck here, with someone who reminded him _so much_ of the people back home he’d had to leave behind, he’d be bawling. Kairi might not cry, since as far as Riku knows she didn’t when she first came to the Islands, but she’d be sad.

Kairi by herself is just not something Riku wants to think about. Especially not here, with these people.

He hopes this isn’t really Kairi’s world. It’s too messed up. It’s Sho Hatake’s world, and Riku’s world now, too, at least temporarily, but…it can’t be Kairi’s.

With a sigh, he scrubs a hand over his face. His eyes sting, and when he glances in the mirror, they’re obviously red. Splashing his face with cold water helps, a bit.

Riku wipes his face off with a towel (it smells a bit stale, and honestly, whoever decided to let Naruto live on his own was an _idiot_ ) and walks out.

There’s no sign of Kakashi. Naruto pokes his head out from the bedroom and says, “ _Finally_ ,” then all but bowls Riku over as he charges into the bathroom.

The kitchen and living/dining room are as clean as when Riku left, earlier, no trash left out or dishes left dirty. Cleaner, even, because the sink is empty and nearly sparkling. Beneath the window, there’s now a padded bench that Riku can’t believe he missed earlier, softly upholstered in a blue-green wave-pattern. He runs a hand over it. He doesn’t expect the top to come open, but he isn’t shocked when it does. Inside, there’s three knives, three throwing stars, a pouch like the one Naruto wears on his thigh, a pair of sandals also like Naruto’s, and a set of clothes: utterly nondescript black pants, yellow sleeveless shirt.

///

Riku’s second reunion with Mr. Iruka’s class is longer than the first, which mostly gives them more time to pump him for information while everyone waits for Mr. Iruka to get back from whatever chuunin-exam-related thing he was summoned to, forty minutes into Riku’s lesson.

That was almost an hour ago; after twenty minutes, Mr. Iruka’s class came back, and Riku, faced with the prospect of trying to corral a few dozen child-ninjas, caves into their demands. Within ninety seconds, they’ve worked out a tit-for-tat where, for every question he answers, the class either answers one from him or teaches him something.

In short order, Riku has learned how to tie ninja wire to the metal circle on his new knives, how to correctly _hold_ his new knives, that Sasuke’s neighborhood is empty because his whole family was murdered about six years ago, that the bird seal is objectively the most annoying, how to fall down correctly (apparently he’s been doing it wrong his whole life), and how to do a backflip from a standing start (and he only falls down four times in the attempt).

The kids seem endlessly fascinated by the Islands, and even make him draw a map on the board. They then critique his map of the Islands, because Riku isn’t any kind of artist.

Riku keeps an eye on the white-eyed girl, mostly because she’s the only one who really stood out to him before. She doesn’t ask or answer any questions, but she does demonstrate the backflip. She then watches Riku, pale, pupil-less eyes narrowed, as he messes it up four different ways.

Child-ninjas are the worst idea _ever_. They aren’t cute, like Sora and Kairi were at their age. They’re pretty creepy, really. Not in a scary way, even though Riku knows that most of them had sharp knives; the little girl with the white eyes probably doesn’t even _need_ knives. She just _stares_ with those intent eyes, like she’s dissecting everything, all the time. She’s not the only one, either, just the most obvious; a couple of the kids are hanging back, watching but not talking, and even more are up at the front of the group, where they have the best view of Riku almost spraining his wrist, then his knee, then his _everything_.

The kids remind him that he could have been like this, training to hurt people, practicing weird seals with his hands, dissecting the world. Instead, he’d been able to play in the sand with Sora and later Kairi, come home to a mother who loved him, and the hardest thing he had to think about was his math homework.

Eventually, Mr. Iruka returns, and he looks first confused and then irritated to see Riku standing at the front of the room, next to his pitiable map, trying to follow directions from five different nine-year-olds as they teach him how to _properly_ stretch before (or after) backflips and other acrobatics.

Actually, no, he doesn’t look irritated _at Riku_ ; he swings his irritated expression over to the window, where Kakashi is reading his little orange book.

“Hatake, I thought you were asked to monitor my class.”

“I did monitor them.” Kakashi hops out of the window easily, sliding his book into his pocket carefully. “I monitored their information-gathering skills. Not bad, although they would have learned more if they stuck to just questions.”

Mr. Iruka rubs the scarred bridge of his nose. Before he can say anything, though, the little white-eyed girl speaks up.

“We gained equally valuable information on your nephew’s skills.”

Riku makes a face. There is _no way_ that’s complimentary, what with his near-wipeouts.

“They were a little obvious about it, too,” Kakashi adds, and while he doesn’t _sound_ like he’s reacting to the little girl, his eye crinkle seems barbed. “Typically, the target shouldn’t _know_ you’re information-gathering, no, Teacher?”

Ah, spy games. Riku gets the impression that, every time spy stuff comes up, he’s _always_ going to feel this mix of frustration and confusion.

Still, the girl demonstrated the flip for him.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to try to trick your allies,” Riku says. “I mean, if they find out later on that you did that, they wouldn’t be your allies for much longer, would they?”

The girl gives him a long, assessing look. So does Kakashi. Mr. Iruka, at least, looks happy at Riku’s remark.

“That’s a good observation, Riku! Jounin Hatake, thank you for your evaluation and your time.” Mr. Iruka’s tone goes all formal and stilted, not in the least bit as sincere as his praise for Riku. “Class, back to your seats.”

While the students file back to their desks—if the rows of wooden benches and tables could be called desks—Kakashi tells Riku, “Follow me,” and then jumps out of the window.

The classroom’s on the first floor, so Riku hops out of the window, glaring in the direction of a flash of silver hair. The least his uncle could do is wait for him, but no, he’s going to make Riku run to catch up. And keep running, too.

Finally, Kakashi stops, in front of some sort of carved stone. As usual, it’s in ninja-writing, so Riku can’t read it. Kakashi glances at him as he approached.

“Iruka says you’ve been doing well.”

Riku shrugs. “It’s just one jutsu. I knew it two days ago, but he thinks I need to practice it more.”

“Which one did he teach you?”

“The illusion.” It’s actually called the transformation jutsu, but that is highly misleading; it doesn’t _change_ anything, not really.

Kakashi nods, doesn’t ask which jutsu Riku meant (which proves his point that “illusion” fits better than “transformation”), and turns back to the stone for a few moments. Then he says, “Show me.”

Riku does. He doesn’t even need to close his eyes to concentrate anymore. He pulls the power/energy/chakra and visualizes Sora, the way he looked when he demanded to spar with Riku, the specific spikes of his hair, the bridge of his nose, the grass stains on his clothes from where they wrestled that morning.

An instant later (Riku is particularly good at Sora, Kairi, and his mother, and almost as fast with Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka; he can do Naruto or Kakashi, but Mr. Iruka told him that he doesn’t know them well enough to fool anyone), Riku looks like Sora. He can’t see it himself, but Mr. Iruka told him it was a very good illusion, and Kakashi nods.

“Did Iruka tell you why he wanted you to keep practicing?”

Riku shakes his head. “He just said I needed to work with it to make it better.”

“He didn’t mean the illusion.” Kakashi faces Riku. A few seconds later, Riku feels the strain of maintaining the illusion and lets it go. “He meant the _technique_.” 

“My hand seals are fine. He wouldn’t teach me _any_ jutsu until I knew them all.”

It’s Kakashi’s turn to shake his head. “Not that. You can make the movements, but you have no stamina, no control. You put too much chakra into the jutsu and, because you don’t have the reserves to back it up, you run out.” He gestures at Riku. “Like you did just now.”

“Oh.” Riku frowns, thinking that over. “So it’s like swimming—I’m practicing because I can’t go very far yet, but when I can, he’ll teach me more jutsu?” Or, on second thought, like when Mr. Iruka told him to run up the stairs. He still forgets about half the time but, now that he has some more context, he thinks he’s been less tired when he finishes.

“Something like that.”

“Why didn’t he just say that, then?”

Kakashi smiles. “Did you ask him?”

Riku gives his uncle his very most unimpressed look, because that’s all that question deserves. After taking a beat, then two, to let it sink in, he asks, “If I keep practicing, will I use less chakra automatically, or is there a trick to not putting in too much?”

Kakashi makes a “hm” sound, drawing it out as he looks Riku over. “Most students grow up in a ninja village. They’re exposed to chakra, even if their family isn’t ninja. By the time they enter the Academy, they have an awareness of chakra that goes beyond the academic. By the time they are genin, most ninja can feel the chakra they use as they use it. It is then simply a matter of…using less. Too little, and the jutsu won’t work at all. There’s some experimentation that all ninja go through, but it’s usually brief.”

Frowning, Riku mentally repeats all that to be sure he understands it. Kakashi has done this to him a few times: instead of a direct answer to what ought to be a simple question, Kakashi will line up a bunch of facts and observations for Riku, to see if he can piece them together into his own conclusion. It’s annoying as hell, but Riku _is_ learning more about Konoha and twisty ways of thinking.

So, the facts:

  1. Baby ninja can still feel chakra.
  2. You don’t need to use chakra yourself to feel it around you.
  3. You develop that sense naturally; no one at the Academy teaches it, because the students all have it when they walk in.
  4. When you use chakra on your own, you can feel it go into the jutsu.
  5. If you already know that you’re using too much chakra, you can start limiting it as you use jutsu.
  6. You’ve gone too far (too little chakra) if the jutsu itself doesn’t work.
  7. But Riku didn’t grow up in a ninja village, so he might not have that sense.



“So the trick is, I need to go back in time and grow up here.”

That earns Riku a genuine, quick laugh. “Not quite. You should spend your time around people using chakra. There are training grounds all around Konoha, so you shouldn’t find that too difficult. In the meantime, practicing the jutsu will expand your reserves.” 

Kakashi nods. “Those kids you watched today know that jutsu.” Riku jerks his head up, staring at Kakashi in disbelief. “It isn’t hard,” he adds with a shrug. “The hand seals are simple and there aren’t many of them. The difficulty with an illusion lies in making it effective, which is a combination of the illusion being believable and the illusion lasting long enough to fool the enemy. Children usually can’t manage that, but they can start practicing it early.” He looks at Riku. “It’s one of the jutsu that students are tested on in order to become genin.” 

Riku considers that fact the way he might consider a receding tide. Then he straightens his spine. “It takes students six years to become genin.” The students told him there were exceptions—he’s _looking_ at exception right now, apparently. He doesn’t feel like an exception, himself, though. “Why am I learning that jutsu now?”

“It won’t take you six years,” Kakashi says dismissively, waving that away with one hand. “It probably won’t take you six _weeks_ , if you apply yourself.” 

Okay. Setting aside that Kakashi has been less involved and less invested in Riku’s learning than even _Sasuke_ (if only because Riku has started following Naruto to the training ground they wait for Kakashi in, and it is apparently _physically painful_ for Sasuke to do nothing but watch Riku mess up hand seals, or hand-to-hand stances, or knife grips). Setting aside that Kakashi, therefore, has _no business_ telling Riku to “apply himself.” What does Riku know?

He knows this one jutsu, which is on the graduation test. He knows what he’s been messing up on, with this one jutsu.

“I’m not a normal Academy student,” Riku asks slowly. “Will my test be the same?”

This time, he doesn’t earn a laugh, but he thinks Kakashi’s eye crinkle is approving. It’s certainly _pronounced_. “There may be some differences, but the jutsu you’ll be tested on will be the same as everyone else.”

This is—cheating. This is getting the answer key ahead of time—no, not an answer key, but a copy of the test. Sure, he’ll need to study, but he won’t need to study _nearly_ as hard as everyone else, because they’ll be studying everything while Riku just goes straight for the test topics.

“Why am I special?”

“Did you really think we were going to put you in a desk with six-year-olds?”

“ _Yes_.” It’s the fair thing to do, much as Riku wouldn’t like it. That’s the level he’s at. If he skips ahead, it should be because he’s good enough to _earn_ that, not because his uncle pulled some strings. He repeats, “Why am I special?”

Kakashi hesitates, not looking at Riku. His eye is trained on the stone in front of them. “I was good for my age. Better than my peers. And it was a time of war. All of us learned faster, then.”

This is the memorial stone Naruto described, before. Riku looks at the size of the names (tiny), and even though he can’t read them, he thinks he has a good idea of the _number_ of names there. “Did Konoha win the war?” Wars, he’s dimly aware from history classes, have clean beginnings and endings, unlike the never-ending messiness of pirate raids.

“Of course.” Kakashi looks at him. “The Fourth Hokage led us to victory against the Village Hidden in the Rocks, among others.”

“Oh.”

Uncle and nephew fall silent, one gazing at the stone, one eyeing the sky. Riku wishes he knew why Kakashi brought him here. Is he supposed to mourn? Feel bad?

He doesn’t know how to do that, here and now, about this. It’s not a memorial for anyone he knows. The first question that comes to mind is what he uses to break the heavy silence: “Did my father fight? In that war?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer for a long moment. “No.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

Riku nods, unsurprised.

“You were probably born right around then,” Kakashi says thoughtfully.

Glancing up at him, Riku catches Kakashi’s eye and frowns. “It was thirteen years ago?” That…isn’t very long ago, comparatively. “Was he here for any of it?”

“Only the first stirrings of war. He wouldn’t have fought in any battles. He was a genin.”

Riku scowls and looks away. Of course; _Kakashi_ isn’t a crappy ninja, but Riku’s _father_ was. Naruto and his friends—well, his teammates—are younger than Riku and they’re already testing for chuunin status. They won’t get it this time, but they probably will in a few years. Meanwhile, Riku’s mother was in her twenties when he was born, so he doesn’t think it’s a stretch to assume that his father was as well. At least seven years older than Naruto, and less competent.

“Was there anything he _didn’t_ suck at?” Riku mutters. There’s a rock next to his shoe. He kicks it, but it doesn’t go very far. He scowls at it.

“Most people are good at something,” Kakashi says quietly. “He disappeared effectively enough.”

“You found me.”

“No one’s found him.”

Riku’s mother never figured out whether his father went back home (obviously not), or went to sea, or what. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s a pirate. Riku doesn’t care. If he did, he might be curious, might want to track the man down, but Hatake Sho has been dead to him since he was four and his father walked out of his life. There’s no point in wasting his time trying to find the body.

Riku and Kakashi fall silent, and this time, Riku doesn’t say anything to break it.

///

Riku practices holding the illusion for longer. Afterwards, he feels stretched-out and drained, like a glass of juice that someone poured out. He hasn’t accomplished anything, there isn’t that edge of pleasant feeling that comes with exercise—he’s just exhausted. He tries to run up and down the stairs after, and barely makes it up the second time. No one warned him that using chakra would use up his physical energy, too, but he’s no longer shocked by the withholding.

The next day, he’s able to hold the jutsu for longer. By seconds, but still, an improvement.

///

For three days, Riku has the apartment to himself. Mr. Iruka warned him ahead of time (and Kakashi gave him some cryptic statements that, in retrospect, also warned about impending Naruto-less-ness). He keeps track of the differences.

Obviously, Riku needs to cook less food, because he’s only feeding himself. He cooks less often, too, since his leftovers are still there when he gets home, every time. He has to buy all his supplies himself, though; there are no magically-appearing ingredients, which he didn’t take for granted, exactly, but did appreciate.

The plants need watering. Riku does his best, though without any instructions, he’s worried about accidentally killing them and making Naruto cry again.

He gets cleaning supplies—from Mr. Iruka, not Kakashi—and scours the bathroom. (Mr. Iruka said that he can put in a D-rank mission and get some genin to do it, if he wants to, but he quotes some prices and Riku decides that he’d rather do it himself and eat things other than Naruto’s instant ramen reserves.)

Naruto, it turns out, _has_ a washer, although it’s smaller than Riku’s used to. There’s no dryer, but Riku’s seen other people hanging their clothes up outside. Since Naruto’s out and Riku’s the one who has to put up with the smell, he does Naruto’s laundry while he’s at it, and then folds everything and puts it away, Naruto’s things in his dresser and Riku’s in the padded bench Kakashi left.

It seems like an obvious thing, that the apartment would feel different, empty, but he didn’t realize that it would also _smell_ different. After the first day, the ever-present scent of Naruto (ramen, sweat, grass, and blood) weakened. By the third day, it’s still there, but it has a different quality; it’s less potent, faded like a colorful shirt washed too many times. Riku normally filters out the smell of Naruto just like he filters out his own scent, but now he has to concentrate to even notice what was Naruto’s versus what’s his in every room except the bedroom. He’s pretty sure the bedroom will _always_ smell strongly of Naruto—at least, it’ll take more than a few days to undo years of sleeping there.

Without Naruto and Kakashi to distract him, Riku’s skills improve at an honestly alarming rate. Once he catches on to what Kakashi talked about, limiting the chakra he puts into the illusion jutsu, he focuses and focuses until he gets it exactly perfect, just enough chakra to get the illusion started without an ounce more wasted, leaving him all the rest of his reserves to maintain the illusion.

After the first time, he never needs to concentrate that hard again. As he forms the hand seals, he just _automatically knows_ how little chakra he can get away with using. It’s like muscle memory, and it impresses the hell out of Mr. Iruka.

That little improvement lets him hold the illusion for longer, and on top of his improvement with the jutsu and chakra control, he can run longer _and_ farther. Mr. Iruka says he’s considering letting Riku start weight training, to build up strength in his arms. Riku doesn’t need weights to do push-ups on his own, though, and he’s improving enough that Riku didn’t even mind that he’s working every muscle in his body and winds up collapsing in his bed in total exhaustion at the end of every day.

Then, on the fourth day, Naruto is back, babbling about some guy without eyebrows, and some other people with weird eyes, and fighting, and a huge snake. He winds down with a fight he got into with some guy from Konoha who was, apparently, a super-huge jerk, and obsessed with destiny, and absolutely deserved the righteous ass-kicking Naruto had delivered unto him.

It’s like Sora and Tidus produced a child, and then someone left him to fend for himself in the forest.

“Because his nose is really good,” Naruto says. At some point, he stopped talking about his own fight, and after he got through Sakura’s (Riku doesn’t care) and Sasuke’s (Riku _really_ doesn’t care, because apparently Sasuke won), he starts briefly glossing over everyone else’s, as if Riku _asked_ him to talk endlessly about the chuunin exams. “Like his dog’s. So—”

“How good?” interrupts Riku, surprised that Naruto managed to say something interesting.

Naruto pauses, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Dogs have good noses, right? That good, I guess.”

Riku frowns. There weren’t enough dogs on the Islands for him to know how good that is, in comparison to him. “Is that a common thing, then?”

“What, good noses?”

“Yeah.”

“I…don’t _think_ so?” Naruto scrunches up his face. “I mean, I can smell better than Sakura or Sasuke, but,” he grimaces, “Kiba’s probably better than me. Why?”

“I’ve always been able to smell better than other people. I think I got it from my father.”

“Your dad?” Naruto catches Riku’s eyes. “He was a ninja, right?”

Riku hesitates. He doesn’t know what Kakashi told his team when Riku wasn’t around; probably _something_. How much, though, is the question. “He used to be,” Riku says. “He left Konoha and met my mother, so it was a long time ago.”

“Was he really awesome?”

That one’s easy. “No.” Riku clenches a fist, breathing in, _two-three-four_ , then releases his fist and his breath both. “He left. I don’t—I barely remember him. I didn’t even know he _was_ a ninja, until Kakashi came to get me.”

“Oh.” Naruto shuffles his feet. “I don’t remember either of my parents.”

Riku looks at him. They’ve had this conversation before. It must be awkward for Naruto to talk about parents, with nothing to contribute. “Sorry,” he says, all he can think to say. Anything else would just be too mean.

Naruto shrugs. “It’s fine. I mean, I don’t remember them at all, so… It’s not so bad. I guess.”

“Did they die in the war?”

“What war?”

Frowning, Riku tries to remember what Kakashi told him. It wasn’t like he took notes. “The war against…the Village in the Stone?” That isn’t right, but Naruto looks a bit less confused. Probably he recognizes the place, if not the war. “Kakashi said it was about thirteen years ago, and the Fourth Hokage won.”

Naruto’s face lights up. “Oh, the _Fourth Hokage_ ,” he says, like that’s some sort of magic password. “I sort of remember that. He was really awesome! He had this cape thing, and he was _super_ powerful!” Naruto demonstrates either the cape or the power or _something_ with his hands. “I don’t think my parents died in any war. I was born when the Nine-Tails attacked.” As soon as he says it, Naruto bites his lip and looks away.

“The Nine-Tails?” Going by the conversation and the way Naruto said it— _the Nine-Tails attacked_ —Riku’s guess is “some kind of army.”

“Um. It was a demon.” That’s…different. “It attacked the village and killed a lot of people, like Iruka’s parents, so _don’t_ ask him about it!” Naruto’s suddenly in Riku’s face, staring him down.

“Okay, okay, I won’t.” Naruto backs off. “I’ve never heard of a demon, though. Why’s it called the Nine-Tails?”

“Because it has nine tails. Duh.”

Riku glares, but drops the subject. He’ll ask Kakashi about it sometime; Naruto would probably get all the details wrong, anyway. “So, what’s next with the exam?”

“Fighting!” Naruto pumps a fist in the air. “I’m gonna be fighting Kiba, so I have to train really hard and kick his ass! Dogbreath is going _down_!”

Well, that’s the perfect opening. “Wanna spar?” Riku asks, grinning and planting one fist on his hip. When Naruto hesitates, he adds, “Unless you’re too scared to, of course.”

“I’m gonna kick your ass for that!”

Naruto then insists that they use one of the training grounds, not just the dirt patch right outside the apartment, so he leads them to the nearest one. It’s mostly flat, with some trees off to one side, and nowhere near the river.

“You better be ready,” Naruto shouts, pointing at Riku. “I’m not going easy on you just ’cause you’re new here!”

Riku rolls his eyes. “Ready,” he calls, purposefully casual.

Naruto runs at him, quicker than Riku expects, but not quite enough to catch him off guard. Dodging the incoming fist, Riku tries to punch Naruto in the gut, a move that typically worked on Sora.

Naruto isn’t Sora. He twists out of the way like some kind of eel and kicks at Riku, hitting his knee. Riku grunts as that knee hits the dirt. That doesn’t stop him from grabbing onto the sleeve of Naruto’s jacket and yanking him toward the ground.

As far as Riku can tell, there are no real rules to this spar, although Naruto has yet to pull out a knife and Riku didn’t even bring his. “Spar” quickly becomes less accurate than “wrestling match,” particularly when Naruto, on the way down, latches onto Riku’s shirt, bringing him all the way to the ground as well.

Riku lands on top and takes the opportunity to punch Naruto in the face. Naruto, in turn, takes the hit and pulls his knees up to his chest, under Riku. He _kicks_.

That’s pretty close to Riku’s signature dodging move; in fact, he’s pretty sure he’s _used_ that maneuver against Wakka at least once. It _hurts_ , bruises no doubt forming on his stomach and ribs, then his back when he topples all the way backward. When he blinks his eyes open, Naruto is sitting on his stomach, grinning widely.

“That was easy,” he says.

Riku attempts to punch him in the face. Naruto catches his fist and pins it to the ground, laughing.

“I win!” he says, right in Riku’s face, and that stings worse than his back or the bruises Naruto’s sitting on. Riku has a _pristine_ record of wins back home on the Islands. (Well. Not against Sora, obviously, because Sora is a tiny tank and a brat and determined enough to keep trying until he _does_ win. Against Sora, Riku is hanging onto his lead by more than the skin of his teeth, but only just. Against everyone else, though? Against Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie, separately and together? Riku’s basically a fighting _god_.) “I’m not letting you up until you say it.”

Riku glares at him, but there really is no way around it; he can’t copy the kick attack Naruto used because his legs aren’t under Naruto. For the principle of it, he tries to punch Naruto with his off hand, but that gets pinned down too, with Naruto looking no less smugly satisfied for the trouble.

He could bite Naruto, or headbutt him in the face, but that’s not really sporting. Besides. Riku should have known better than to suggest this in the first place; Naruto deserves to hear that he won, after Riku was stupid enough to challenge someone with _six years_ of experience over him.

“Fine,” he says. “You win. Now get off me.”

Naruto does, and even offers him a hand up. Riku takes it and then brushes himself off, wincing as he touches the bruises from Naruto’s kick. With a sigh, he tugs his shirt up to survey the damage, and finds about what he expects.

“You’re not very good,” Naruto says slowly. His face was scrunches up again. “You really weren’t kidding when you said no one taught you anything.”

“Why would I joke about that?” Riku drops his shirt with a sigh. That’ll teach him to open his big dumb mouth. “Sorry I can’t actually help you beat…Kiba, right?”

Naruto’s mouth opens, then closes, like a frog’s. Open, shut, open, shut. His face is blank, not scrunched, like he can’t even process enough to form a thought. “You wanted to help? Me? Beat Kiba?”

When he shrugs, his ribs protest. Riku wonders what you’re supposed to do with bruises that big; bandage? Ice? “Well, yeah. I mean, you’re my roommate, and I don’t even know the other guy. If I can help, I will. Besides, it’s not like it wouldn’t help _me_ , too; eventually, someone’s going to teach me how to fight.” Hopefully soon; he’s not really sure why Mr. Iruka’s waited this long, although probably teachers know more about the requirements than students do. Maybe he’s waiting for Riku to get fast enough; maybe he’s just waiting for Riku to bring it up himself.

“Huh.” Naruto looks a little stunned at Riku’s logic, but snaps out of it quickly enough. “Do you…want me to show you some things? I mean. If Iruka isn’t already…? You go there every morning.”

Those sentences are only barely connected; if Riku wasn’t already thinking along those lines, he’d probably be confused. As is, he follows what Naruto seems to mean, and says, “He’s just taught me one jutsu, and told me to exercise a lot. No fighting.” Hadn’t he _just_ been thinking that maybe Mr. Iruka has reasons that Riku doesn’t know about, presumably good reasons, for not teaching him yet? “Show me how you dodged my punch? Right at the beginning?”

Naruto’s not good enough to remember exactly how he did it, so he has Riku punch him again. This time, Riku’s watching for it, so he spots how Naruto ducks the punch, so fluidly that he’s back up in a breath.

Naruto repeats the movement a couple times, then they switch; Naruto moves obnoxiously slowly, and while Riku’s got the motions down, they’re jerky, duck-and-back-up, not the smooth twist that Naruto used.

“Your feet are wrong,” Naruto says, because apparently that’s where _his_ attention is. “You’re gonna fall.” And when they try it again, Naruto shifts where he’s punching just a hair (still just as slow, though, so Riku even sees that coming), and Riku does end up on his ass. He falls the way the Academy students taught him, when they were going over the backflip with him, and discovers that it hurts a lot less than just dropping would.

It takes about fifteen minutes before Riku gets his feet, and then his knees, and then his hips where Naruto thinks they ought to be. When he gets it right, though, he can _feel_ the difference. He’s not as smooth or as quick as Naruto, still, but at least it looks like the same motion now. With practice, he thinks he can _get_ to Naruto’s level.

“You said Iruka taught you a jutsu?” Naruto waits for Riku to nod. “Which one? Show me.” His arms are crossed over his chest, like he’s going to judge Riku’s technique.

Riku demonstrates the illusion, although this time he uses Kakashi.

“Blegh. I could never get that one right. I’ve got a better one, though.” His face clears up into the widest grin Riku has seen on him yet. “Wanna see?”

“Sure.”

Naruto’s hands form one sign, the boar—no, wait, the ram. That’s it. Then, a burst of smoke all around him, and when it dissipates—

Riku chokes on his own spit and looks away, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Where did your _clothes_ go?”

Naruto laughs; it sounds nothing like how he usually laughed, too high, a little more musical. “It’s my secret weapon! Sexy Jutsu!”

There’s a patch of grass a few feet from Riku, trampled from when they were wrestling. “ _How_ is that a weapon?”

Naruto is not stealthy. He wears bright orange, he’s obnoxiously loud, he doesn’t even generally try to sneak around.

This time, though, he does, and Riku doesn’t hear him at all, only smells him when he’s way too close. And pointing a knife in Riku’s face. “Like this,” he says, smiling, and Riku _has_ to look at him because of the knife, and.

Well.

Riku hasn’t seen a naked girl since he and Sora and Kairi went skinny-dipping last year, and caught hell for it from _everyone’s_ parents when they got caught. He’s never seen a naked woman at all, which is what Naruto looks like now.

Then there’s that burst of smoke again, and Naruto is back to his usual clothed, twelve-year-old-boy self. He’s also laughing at Riku. “You should see your _face_!” he manages to say through his laughter.

Riku rolls his eyes, still blushing. “Yeah, great technique. How’s that supposed to help _me_ , though?”

Naruto straightens. Wipes the tears out of his eyes. Says, “I didn’t get the hang of a regular transformation technique, but I _did_ make my own. It helped me. Besides,” and he grins, “if you use that one on Iruka, he’s _sure_ to freak out. Works every time. Not!” He points a finger at Riku. “That I’m giving you permission to freak him out _all_  the time! Iruka’s awesome and works really hard! But sometimes, it’s alright.”

That isn’t an altogether bad plan; throwing Mr. Iruka off could be useful, particularly if Riku could use it to convince him to start teaching Riku more jutsu. Maybe if Mr. Iruka thinks Riku is learning from Naruto anyway, he’ll be willing to move on, or at least let Riku know what the hold-up is.

“Fine. I’ll learn it. Is it just the hand sign?”

“Well, _no_ , you have to think of a sexy girl too! That’s the most important part!”

It is not _nearly_ that simple. Riku can’t just think about a girl; he needs to picture her, as clearly as possible. Apparently, half the reason Naruto makes himself a _naked_ woman is because clothing adds difficulty. Riku needs to account for every part of the body, from the toes to each strand of hair, and if he doesn’t want to be naked, he needs to clearly picture all the clothes, so detailed that he can not only see them but also hear how they move, smell them, and feel them on his skin.

Eventually, he gets a thorough enough version of Kairi’s babysitter Rinoa that, when he forms the ram seal, there’s a burst of smoke.

“…That’s not bad for a first try.” Naruto looks impressed.

Riku grins, flipping his newly-long hair over his bikini-strapped shoulder. It’s actually really breezy today, with hardly any clothes on. He thought Naruto’s jutsu would be like the illusion, where it felt like he was fitting himself into somebody else’s body and had to concentrate, a bit, on making sure his hands were the correct size.

It isn’t like that at _all_ ; instead, it’s as if he’s taken his own body and stretched it into Rinoa’s body. Riku tries to think of himself under Rinoa’s shape, but that just makes the the jutsu collapse around him, leaving him back in his own body.

“Aww, why’d you let it go?”

Riku shakes his head. “I didn’t mean to. Let me try again.”

They practice for the rest of the afternoon, Riku steadily getting over how _wrong_ it feels for his body to not be _his body_ , until Naruto’s stomach growls and he demands that Riku repay him with food for his awesome technique. As they walk home, they swap stories about the best and worst parts of school.

Naruto loudly finds most of Riku’s stories boring, but he thinks volcanoes sound cool, and Riku did a science fair project on volcanoes once, so they talk about that while Riku makes them both dinner. It’s not a bad day, and Riku finds that, unlike when he woke up this morning, he’s actually looking forward to Naruto being back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I decided not to go with the canon pairings. I actually spent a LONG TIME considering the matter, and weighing whether I thought the matchups were rigged versus allowed to be random, whether I thought people like Danzo, the council, and even Sarutobi would _allow_ the matchups to be random...
> 
> I decided to run the list of genin for the preliminaries through a randomizer and went from there, originally. When editing, I ran it again, and ultimately chose from the three options (the two random match-ups plus the canon matches, although I wound up not using any of the canon preliminary pairings) for what would make the best narrative.
> 
> In here, the preliminary matches were (winners listed first):
> 
> 1\. Gaara vs Chouji  
> 2\. Shino vs Dosu  
> 3\. Naruto vs Neji  
> 4\. Kiba vs Zaku  
> 5\. Tenten vs. Yoroi  
> 6\. Shikamaru vs. Kankuro  
> 7\. Sasuke vs Lee  
> 8\. Hinata vs Kin  
> 9\. Temari vs Sakura  
> 10\. Ino vs Misumi 
> 
> If you're looking at this lineup and the winners and thinking that there are some potentially significant changes ahead based on this, you'd be right! Some of the consequences are more far-reaching than others; now, how much _Riku_ will notice, on the other hand...
> 
> In other news, I'm strongly considering doing a collection of one-shots for scenes where Riku's not present. Things like, Kakashi getting the letter, or the preliminary rounds, or people reacting to Kakashi suddenly having this nephew. It's something to think about, anyway.


	6. Training Montage Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku gets two new tutors and learns to hate leg day. In other news, everything about child soldiers is horrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, SO, FIRST OFF: this chapter is WAY late, and I'm sorry. The beginning of the semester is always a bit busy, but that's not really why this is late. Oh no.
> 
> See, when this chapter was first written, Gai wasn't in it. When I confidently said, oh yes, it'd be up in a week! That's the chapter I was talking about. Totally, 100% written, I'd already edited about half of it, and then, suddenly, it occurs to me: Gai is _back in town now_. There is no way he's letting Kakashi be solely responsible for a young person! GAI KNOWS KAKASHI. He knows what a terrible idea that would be!
> 
> So then I had to put Gai in, and unfortunately, I am...really not confident with my Gai!voice. (Or Lee, for that matter, who is Sir Cameo in this chapter.)
> 
> Anyway, apologies for the lateness, hopefully the next chapter contains fewer surprises and is up sooner.
> 
> ALSO: there is a departure from canon re: Sakura's backstory. It's for thematic purposes, and most fics don't follow canon for Sakura anyway (she has ninja parents, apparently! This is from the anime, but it's Kishimoto-Approved, so...) It also lets me establish a couple of things about how Konoha's institutions are set up that will come up later in bigger ways. Other than that specific element of her backstory, though, I'm not changing anything from canon before Riku gets to town.
> 
> FINALLY: the training bits in here are gleaned from How to Fight Write's [writing training](http://howtofightwrite.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-training) tag.
> 
> ETA: apparently my spell-checker was...not working. Argh. I think I caught everything; if you see something egregious, please let me know.

Riku’s surprised when he wakes up the next morning to polite knocking on the door. He can’t remember anyone ever knocking on the door, as his uncle and Naruto usually just walk right in.

Yawning, he pulls himself up and goes to answer the knocking. He blinks, sure that he’s still asleep and dreaming when he sees Sakura and Sasuke standing there.

Sakura’s hair is cropped short. It is, after a moment of staring, even shorter than his own, although not quite as short as Kairi’s. He wonders when she cut it, whether it was before or after she knew her team would be trying to pass the Chuunin Exams.

The shorter hair definitely makes it easier for him to remember not to call her Cotton Candy.

“Good morning,” she says. “May we come in? Kakashi said to meet here.”

“Sure.” He lets them in, glad that he pulled on a pair of pants and an old t-shirt last night, unlike Naruto, who sleeps in his boxers. Riku doesn’t know how he stands it; Konoha isn’t freezing, maybe, but right now, and especially at night, it’s colder than the Islands ever got.

“Naruto didn’t say anything, did he?” Sakura asks as she seats herself at the kitchen table. “I bet he forgot.”

“Probably.” He glances over, sees that Sasuke’s in the (new) second chair, and leans against the sink. “Is Kakashi going to show up anytime soon?”

“He said he’d be here by now,” Sakura says with a small sigh, while Sasuke tells the truth: “No.”

“Then I’ll make breakfast. Did you eat already?” He’s mostly asking Sakura, because he hasn’t really interacted with her since she beat him, and that’s not enough for him to dislike her. She hadn’t really gloated or anything, after all.

Both of them shake their heads, though, so he pulls out enough rice for four—and makes it five after a second of thought—as well as the fish he bought yesterday.

“You cook?” That’s Sakura; Sasuke is reading a scroll he apparently brought with him.

Riku nods at her as he pulls out and heats up Naruto’s grill pan. Naruto clearly never used it; Riku excavated it from a mountain of old ramen packets, then washed it until it didn’t smell dusty and vaguely salty. It works well enough on Naruto’s weird stove, and it’s not like there’s enough space on the balcony for a _real_ grill, let alone anything close to a fire pit.

“Are you going to make tea?” Sakura asks after a few moments.

He frowns, then glances at the cabinets behind him. “There might be some…” He doesn’t care for it so he doesn’t buy it, but Naruto might have gotten some back when he did his own shopping. Then Riku looks at Sakura, who’s fidgeting and biting her lip. “I could get you a glass of water?”

She nods, smiling, and he feels like he’s passed some secret test. “Thank you,” she says when he hands the glass to her.

Sasuke doesn’t say anything, so Riku just sets a second glass in front of him. Then he sets about grilling the fish and heating up the rice. His mother would probably scold him, but he isn’t doing anything special with either of them. She would never feed plain fish and refrigerator rice to guests, but they’re here uninvited (by him, anyway) and he isn’t about to waste effort on Sasuke, or on his uncle.

Naruto gets up and wanders into the bathroom when Riku’s about half done. He comes out awake enough to gape at his teammates sitting in his kitchen.

“What’re _you_ doing here?” he asks, pointing at Sasuke.

Riku can’t see Sasuke, but he hears the boy snort. “Kakashi said to come here.”

“He said to come here _this morning_ ,” Naruto says. “What’re you doing here _now_? He won’t be here for hours!”

“So harsh!” Kakashi says from the window. Naruto jumps, and even Sakura flinches a bit, but Riku doesn’t move, and going by sound, neither did Sasuke. There isn’t even a crinkle of scroll-paper to give away Sasuke’s reaction. Riku doesn’t know if Sasuke was expecting it as well or just hid his reaction better than his teammates.

“Wh— B— You!” Naruto is pointing again.

Riku turns off the stove, pulls the fish out of the pan, and after a second or two of staring at it, divides it into five more-or-less equal servings. He pulls out plates and chopsticks, then retrieves the rice from the microwave. Throughout this, his body is an autopilot; all his attention is on the other people in the room.

Naruto is still pointing, and Kakashi’s eye is closed in the way that means he’s smiling broadly under his mask. Sasuke keeps reading his scroll, and Sakura has her face buried in her hands, shaking her head.

“Me!” Kakashi says.

“You’re _early_. Why are you _early_?”

“I am not. I’m five minutes late.”

“Which _is_ early,” Riku points out, “for you.”

Everyone turns to stare at him, as if they forgot he’s there. Naruto recovers first.

“Yeah! Usually you’re way later than that. What gives?”

Kakashi shrugs. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“You don’t live anywhere near here!”

Sakura pulls her face out of her hands. “You know where he lives?” she asks, frowning at Naruto.

Eyes narrowed, Sasuke also looks at Naruto.

Naruto smirks. “Of _course_ I know where he lives.”

Riku absently starts plating the fish and rice. Wincing a bit, he decides that the prettiest plate ought to be Sakura’s, and the one with the most mangled-looking fish is Naruto’s, because they will care the most and the least, respectively. The one with the most fish can go to Kakashi, and Riku takes the second-most for himself. It’s still about the same as Sasuke’s portion, but that tiny bit of difference satisfies the petty part of Riku.

“Besides,” Kakashi says, waving a hand, “I smelled breakfast. And look, my favorite nephew even made me a plate.” He smiles again, and swoops over to take the plate Riku holds out in his direction, retreating back to perch on the padded bench with his prize like some sort of giant bird. “I feel so loved.”

“Your _only_ nephew,” Riku corrects him, handing Sasuke and Sakura their plates. “And I just did it so you wouldn’t steal Naruto’s. Or mine.” He doesn’t think Kakashi would steal Sakura’s, and if he tries for Sasuke’s, Riku wishes him luck. Riku starts to pass Naruto his plate, since he’s closest, then frowns at him. More accurately, Riku frowns at Naruto’s bare chest and ridiculous boxers. “Go get dressed.”

Naruto rolls his eyes and grumbles that Riku isn’t his mother, but he goes back into their bedroom.

“You’re still my favorite nephew.” Kakashi seemingly ignores everything else Riku said. “I should visit you more often.”

“You should _pay_ me more often,” Riku replies as he passes out the chopsticks. At least Naruto bought the food for last night and today. That can’t continue indefinitely, though: Riku has seen Naruto’s frog wallet, and there’s not enough munny in it to cover the both of them for much longer. “Or else I’ll have to get a job.”

He says it plainly, not expecting the reaction that he gets. Sakura actually chokes on her rice, prompting Sasuke to pound her back a few times while glancing from Riku to Kakashi with both eyebrows raised. Kakashi might have reacted, but Riku doesn’t catch it.

“What? What did I say?”

Sakura shakes her head, then sets her chopsticks down. “The Hatakes are a ninja clan. It’s…a clan thing.”

“Clan members can have jobs,” Sasuke says, frowning at her. Then he looks at Riku, his expression serious but not angry. “Only ones who don’t want to be ninja, though. Or who can’t.”

“You’ll earn munny when you become a genin and start going on missions,” Kakashi tells him. “I thought Iruka would tell you.”

Well, okay, that explains some of the special treatment he’s getting—including why everyone is getting him ready for the test, instead of teaching him _all_ the things he doesn’t know. Riku doesn’t really _want_ a job, anyway; he just wants to be able to stop worrying about making his allowance stretch to cover all the food he and Naruto eat.

Riku starts eating, going slowly because he still isn’t quite used to the chopsticks. He can handle meat, but rice is an issue best tackled alone, where he can use his hands without anyone else knowing.

Before Sakura just now, no one told him anything about the Hatakes. Kakashi barely mentioned his family that one time, and that’s it. Riku never realized the Hatakes used to be a clan. They can’t still be, whatever Sakura says, because the only Hatakes he knows of are himself and Kakashi (and his father, who doesn’t count). A clan has to have more than two members. Two people are a family, not a clan; Riku isn’t sure what’s so special about clans here in Konoha, but on the Islands, there are clans that control certain islands, or certain trades. Ships made by the famous Waveshroud clan are renowned for making it through storms and raids in one piece; meanwhile, the Shiverglades and Brightforce clans are rumored to be squabbling over a belt of jungle islands somewhere far in the southern seas. Those are _real_ clans, though, with hundreds of members and dozens of families spread across multiple islands.

Two people are a nice, cozy, _tiny_ family. Riku’s realized, since moving in with Naruto, how much work his mother put into keeping them fed and in a clean house; two people, therefore, are barely a family, barely capable of scraping by the way a family needs to. A clan needs to do _more_ than that.

Still, it’s a nice legacy. Maybe, one day, the Hatake clan will do great things again.

Naruto’s the first one to clear his plate, even though he starts eating well after everyone else (and was therefore relegated to the half the bench Kakashi isn’t taking up). Ever since the first day Riku cleaned, he’s been hesitant to bring the topic up with Naruto, afraid of provoking more tears, but it hasn’t been an issue. Naruto has been pretty conscientious about cleaning up after himself. He immediately scrapes his plate into the trash, rinses it off, and sticks it next to the sink. He doesn’t take anyone else’s or clean theirs off, leaving that for Riku, but it’s a start.

Kakashi seems to finish before Naruto, but that’s because he’s scrupulously eating only half the food. He’s so careful about it that it must be on purpose, but Riku can’t figure out why until there’s another knock on the door and Kakashi’s whole _face_ (at least the visible portion) lights up.

Riku, already standing, sets his own half-finished plate down on the counter to answer the knock. On the other side of the door is. Well. He’s certainly an adult.

He’s tall, taller than Kakashi, with black hair and black eyes. His outfit is a startling block of green, broken up by a flak vest and a belt with the Konoha plate

“Good morning!” the man says, with approximately five times as much cheer as Riku has witnessed a human being possess at this hour. He bows, quickly and smoothly. “I am Maito Gai. Pleased to meet you! Might I be correct in assuming you are Hatake Riku, nephew of Kakashi?”

There doesn’t seem to be much point in answering, but Riku nods anyway, then bows jerkily when it occurs to him that this is an introduction, not just some random stranger.

Before Riku can embarrass himself any further, Kakashi calls, “You’re late, Gai! My team is almost finished eating.”

Gai—Mr. Gai? Or is it Mr. Maito?—does not so much as twitch in the direction of that call. His smile is blinding. “It seems I am in the correct place, indeed. Might I come in?”

Riku steps aside. Like everyone else, Gai easily toes out of his sandals as he enters. He makes a straight line for Kakashi.

Who interrupts whatever Gai was thinking or about to say by shoving the half-full plate into his face. “I saved you some breakfast.”

This seems to successfully derail Gai. He takes the plate, and the pair of chopsticks that Kakashi used, and… _inhales_ the food. Even Naruto, who can do a mean vacuum impression on ramen when he wants to, looks impressed.

Taking advantage of the occupation of Gai’s mouth, Kakashi says, “Riku, this is Mr. Gai. He, like me, is the jounin commander of a genin squad. Only one of his genin has passed the preliminary round, and, as a favor, he agreed to help tutor you.”

This news lands like a smoke bomb in a classroom full of ninja children: there’s a beat of silence, and then Naruto, Sasuke, and even Sakura are all having noisy, uncoordinated reactions. Gai himself looks like he swallowed the last mouthful of rice wrong, though he shakes his head when Riku wordlessly offers him a cup of water.

“You can’t just—”

“What about _this_ team—”

“Sasuke _beat_ Lee! Why—”

“—bring in some other—”

“—are you going to find—”

“—would you get some loser—”

“Enough!” Kakashi holds up a hand, and shockingly, the three kids fall silent. “Riku, do you have any questions?”

This is a test. Scratch that: this is a _trap_. If he says no, he seems stupid. If he says yes, then he has to weight each question, each _word_ , carefully, keeping in mind his audience.

Sasuke and Naruto both passed the preliminary round; Sakura, along with two of Mr. Gai’s students and who-knew-how-many others, did not. Presumably, Mr. Gai will want to train both the one student who’s moving forward (so that they’ll win, which will include beating either Naruto or Sasuke or both) and the two who are not (and who, apparently, need it, since they didn’t pass and even _Naruto and Sasuke_ did). And Kakashi has arranged for this man to help Riku, much like he must have arranged for Mr. Iruka to help Riku.

“Will you be tutoring Sakura with me?” he asks Mr. Gai directly.

Mr. Gai beams. Weaponized happiness. He turns that expression on Sakura as well, who doesn’t quail even a little bit. “If she wishes, I would be pleased to continue Miss Haruno’s training while Kakashi is preoccupied.”

Kakashi makes a face at that, and the boys notice immediately. Naruto looks like he’s going to say something, but either his self-control or, more realistically, a well-placed pinch from Sakura stops him.

Riku looks at his uncle. “You’re going to be busy training Naruto and Sasuke, right?”

Clearing his throat, Kakashi addresses the students in question, rather than actually answering Riku’s question. “Obviously, Naruto, Sasuke, you two will need training, and at first I thought I’d just take Sasuke out of the village and arrange a teacher for you, Naruto—”

“I knew it!” Naruto shouts, apparently unable to bottle it up any longer. “When I saw you in the hospital, you were about to do that, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Settle down and let me finish.” Naruto grumbles but subsides. “I’m still going to arrange a teacher for you—I’m afraid it’s become necessary for Sasuke and I to leave the village. Sakura, in the meantime, I’d like you to help Gai train Riku. Gai _does_ have two other students to see to, after all. I expect Riku to be ready to test for genin when Sasuke and I get back.”

“That’s a month,” Sakura says. She doesn’t sound _quite_ panicked, but there’s an edge to her tone that Riku recognizes from the moments of rushed conversations right before pop quizzes, back on the Islands.

Naruto leans over and whispers, too loudly to be subtle, “No one’s taught him how to fight.”

Riku twitches, shoved his hands in his pockets, and bites the inside of his cheek.

It’s true, is the thing. He can dislike Naruto saying it as much as he wants, that won’t change basic facts. No one has ever taught him how to throw a punch or block one, how to dodge a blow or land one; no one taught him how to _fall_ , or stand, or shift his weight. Everything he knows, he learned the hard way, from landing wrong and hurting himself to just missing what he thought he would hit.

Mr. Gai’s hand falls, gentle but solid, on Riku’s shoulder. “If no one has taught you how to fight,” he says, with infinite kindness, “then no one has _mis_ taught you. One month will give us time to begin forming the foundations of your knowledge.”

Riku notes “begin” and “forming” and “foundations,” none of which sound like “teach you how to kick butt and take names.” He says, “Thanks,” and isn’t sure whether he’s thanking Mr. Gai for just agreeing to try, or for being kind about Riku’s complete lack of basic ninja skills.

Gai’s “You’re very welcome!” is untroubled and sincere. Riku takes a moment to wonder how the _hell_ this guy managed to owe _Kakashi_ a favor.

The moment passes. Naruto starts complaining about Kakashi putting him off, while the other two stay mercifully quiet, although when Riku chances a look at Sasuke, he meets a steady black gaze.

He doesn’t know how to interpret the expression on Sasuke’s face; it isn’t a sneer or a smirk, which he expects by this point. Curiosity, maybe—or assessment, almost as if he’s looking _through_ Riku.

Riku looks away first, and after that, ignores Sasuke to the best of his ability.

“Well, that’s it,” Kakashi finally says, smiling again. “Sasuke, I’ll meet you at the gate. Naruto, your teacher should meet with you later today.  I trust all four of you,” his glance indicates Naruto, Sakura, Riku, and Mr. Gai, “to train and get along while I’m not here. Good luck!” Then, with a wave and a swirl of leaves, he’s gone.

Sasuke rolls his eyes and stands up. “Thanks for the meal,” he says in Riku’s general direction. He heads for the door without saying goodbye, either.

“That’s it?” Naruto protests.

Sasuke raises a hand in a careless wave. Riku snorts. Naruto may be _obviously_ obnoxious, but Sasuke is just as annoying, even if he is sneakier about it.

The door shuts. The air itself seems to take on a palpable weight. Riku can’t take any cues from Sakura or Naruto, because they’re busy exchanging uneasy looks and trying not to get caught staring at Mr. Gai. The room feels too small for the number of bodies in it, even though there were more people here a minute ago.

Mr. Gai, thankfully, saves the day.

“What are the limits of your schedule?” he asks Riku. “Or would you rather discuss this later? I understand my friend very well, and I suspect he did not give you as much warning as he gave me.”

“When did he warn you?” Sakura asks.

“This morning.” Mr. Gai laughs at the looks on Sakura and Naruto’s faces. There’s no surprise in either expression, just resignation. “But I have suspected he might ask, once Tenten alone emerged victorious. And, since I have not gotten a chance yet, Naruto: congratulations on besting my student! Neji is a difficult opponent, and he was holding nothing back. It is a testament to your youth, skill, and courage, that you too held nothing back, and prevailed!”

Wait. _Wait_. Naruto beat one of _this guy’s_ students, and Kakashi _still_ went to him for this favor? To train Riku? At least some of the kids’ protests made sense now.

Naruto’s eyes go wide and watery, but before Riku can get more than a little twitchy, he smiles. With the shining liquid eyes, he looks like today is one of the best days of his life.

“Thanks.”

Before Naruto can spoil the moment—and he takes a deep breath and opens his mouth, no doubt about to say something loud and sentiment-shattering—Sakura elbows him and says, “Shouldn’t you be out training? You don’t want your temporary trainer to see you slacking off first thing!”

 _That_ lights a fire under Naruto, and he hurriedly gathers his things and takes off, though he does swing by Riku to punch his shoulder and order him to “learn lots from these guys!”

Riku’s sometimes slow on the uptake, but he’s pretty sure he and Naruto are friends now. He’s not sure when that got decided, or if he had any say, but Naruto seems to have a Sora-like quality of friendship: once he decides he’s friends with someone, that’s it. (This explains some things about Sasuke, now that Riku thinks about it. Maybe Naruto isn’t just annoying for the sake of being annoying, maybe he’s just trying to be friendly to people who consistently rebuff him for no good reason that Riku can see. If that’s true, then Sasuke is _even more of a jerk_ than Riku thought.)

Sakura sighs after he leaves, then turns to Riku. “What _is_ your schedule? Mr. Iruka’s teaching you, already, right?”

He glances out the window, estimating the time. “I have an hour with him soon. That’s pretty much it, though,” and he looks at Mr. Gai as he says it, since the man had asked about his schedule.

Mr. Gai nods, one hand on his chin in a pose of deep thought. “I will plan a training schedule for you, then. Miss Sakura, if I may assume you will handle the scrollwork and theory?”

Sakura’s shoulders relax in relief, but her face falls just a bit. Probably hoping the actual jounin instructor would take over more, but of course, Mr. Gai has an actual team of his own. Whatever the favor is that he owes Kakashi, it’s not nearly enough to make Riku his singular project.

Riku is okay with that. The man seems nice, but intense.

“Then let us divide it this way: I will take mornings and late afternoons, let’s say, from three on. Will that give you enough time for your own tutoring?”

“Yes!” Sakura is way more thrilled about having chunks of Riku’s time taken away from her. “When you said you’d train me too, were you just saying that because Kakashi was here?”

Mr. Gai looks so instantly offended that Sakura actually jerks back a little. “Of course not! My offer was sincere. Would you like to train alongside Mr. Riku? It would not be the same exact training, of course, but I assure you, you would benefit from it!”

“Would I have to wear weights like Lee?”

“Hm. I think…not to start, no. I would build your endurance before I recommended that.”

Okay, that’s interesting enough for Riku to ask, “Weights?”

Mr. Gai chuckles. “Yours as well, Mr. Riku. We can discuss this later, as I believe you said you had an appointment with Mr. Iruka? I will come here at three, and take you to the training ground my team prefers.”

“Sounds good.” And with that, Mr. Gai excuses himself—way more politely than anyone else who’s been in this apartment since Riku arrived, and possibly forever—and leaves Sakura and Riku alone.

“All right,” Sakura squares her shoulders. “We have a little time. Tell me what Iruka’s teaching you, so I know what to plan for.”

Sakura, Riku very quickly realizes, is the _competent_ team-member. He lays out what little he’s learned so far (and, saying it out loud, he _really_ hasn’t learned that much), and she just squares her shoulders and says, with the most I’ve Got This expression Riku’s ever seen, “Alright. You need to go to Mr. Iruka now. I’ll be back in an hour and a half, and we’ll get started.”

///

Iruka’s thrilled that Sakura and Mr. Gai are going to teach Riku. “Not that I mind,” he says hastily, “but an hour isn’t really enough. Sakura was the best student for the written test, and Mr. Gai is a _legendary_ taijutsu master.”

Riku…will need to consider the second point more later. When he can process _a legendary taijutsu master_ owing _his uncle_ a favor. “How is the genin exam graded, anyway?”

Iruka explains that there’s the written portion—definitely a fail for Riku unless he finds a jutsu to dump the meaning of ninja-writing directly into his head—the physical portion, and the jutsu portion.

“To become a genin,” he said, “you need to pass all three.”

“What if someone does really badly on one of them?”

The teacher hesitates. “Only one student has managed to completely fail one of the sections and still graduate. Those were extraordinary circumstances, though. You’ll need to do at least adequately if you want to graduate.” He smiles. “Don’t worry, though. You’re progressing well enough that it shouldn’t be a problem. Today, I was thinking we could start you on the clone jutsu…”

The clone jutsu, when Iruka demonstrates it, looks like just the thing Riku ought to take home to the Islands. The illusion/transformation thing is cool, but not really useful. The clone jutsu, on the other hand, will give him easy wins against Sora for _years_. Not to mention a way to ditch class. The only downside is that it isn’t solid, but Riku is sure there are ways around that.

Not that he’s very good at it— _yet_. He’ll get there. In the meantime, he’ll practice.

He’s excited enough about the jutsu that his writing problem doesn’t occur to him until Sakura walks through the apartment door, equipped with paintbrushes and tiny bottles (full of black paint, it looks like) and scrolls, even a couple books. She somehow manages to kick her shoes off at the door, then dumps her armful on the clean table.

“I was thinking we should start with the First Hokage and the founding of Konoha,” she says, locating a scroll that looks pretty much like every other scroll. The outside edges are maybe a bit nicer.

Riku cherishes the hope that he can fake his way through this lesson until Sakura orders him to take notes and adds, “I’ll look over them to make sure you got all of the important information, but you can’t expect me to just feed it to you.”

“Problem: I can’t read that,” and he points to the scroll.

She stares at him, clearly expecting it to be a joke for several seconds, but when he just stares back, she turns white. Her eyes go wide. Her hands shake a bit, fists clenching. He wonders if she’s going to scream, or hit him.

“How is that even _possible_ ,” she says. “Your islands don’t have _any_ books?”

He scowls, insulted on behalf of his home. “They have plenty of books!”

“Then why can’t you read?”

“I _can_ read, just not _that_.”

She unrolls the scroll a bit more, eyes it, then looks back at him. “So, what, your Islands only have katakana?”

“What?”

She repeats the question, one eye twitching.

“I heard you the first time,” he says, just barely resisting rolling his eyes. His tone is more irritated than he intended. “What’s katakana?”

She explains the difference between hiragana and katakana and kanji, pointing out examples that all look like squiggles to Riku. (To be fair, kanji look like _much more complicated_ doodles, whereas hiragana and katakana look like alien alphabets.) A few times, she clenches her fists and yells, “But you’re _using them right now_! When you talk! Right now!”

To which Riku says, “No, I’m not,” growing increasingly annoyed and bored with the argument. “Do you mean words? Because I’m talking in words, and they do _not_ look like that when I write them.”

Sakura pulls out some blank scrolls, gets a paintbrush and bottle for each of them, and tells him to write out what they had for breakfast that morning. She writes as well, and says that it’s the same thing, but he has no way of knowing. She could have written “I hate my life and my teacher and this stupid kid” and he wouldn’t know the difference.

“Your writing is sideways,” she said, frowning at it.

Hers isn’t; it’s up and down.

“Write your name.” He does, forgetting to put the Hatake first. When he passes it to her, she writes something underneath it. “That’s how to write it on your test. Ha-ta-ke Ri-ku.” She points at a different symbol for each syllable, and he takes a moment to honestly evaluate whether he could get used to writing his name that way. He thinks yes, he could; it doesn’t look like an _impossible_ series of lines and loops to reproduce. Then Sakura frowns. “Or you could write Riku like _this_ ,” and the symbol she writes that time is just about Riku’s worst nightmare. It looks like a miniature house, with a flag; there is _no way_ he could write that as quickly as Sakura just did, not without spending all his time practicing writing instead of jutsu and fighting and all of that.

He groans. “No, nope, not that.” He taps next to the first way she had it. “This is my name, right here.”

“You should talk to Iruka about this,” she says. “He might be willing to let you do that section orally. There’s no _way_ I can teach you how to write and everything else in just a month.”

Riku straightens. “He can do that?”

“Probably. There’s no harm in asking.” She glances over the scrolls and books with a sigh. “We’ll have to do this differently, since you can’t take notes.”

“I can too. You just can’t read them.”

She looks at him long enough to make him uncomfortable, then smiles. “You’re right. That’s a good idea.”

“What is?” he asks, eyes narrowing. He can’t track her train of thought, but the way she’s smiling tells him that he isn’t going to like it.

“I’ll read these to you and you can take notes. Then you read the notes back to me and I’ll tell you if you’re missing something.”

It seems needlessly complicated to him, but she refuses to “feed him the answers,” so it’s the best he’ll get. It isn’t too different from class, really. When they stop for lunch and she offers to show him a good dumpling shop, he realizes that he didn’t hate it, annoying though it is to stop and read off his notes for her.

“I can’t believe Kakashi didn’t notice!” she says as they walk. “I mean, he’s supposed to be a brilliant jounin. The _Copy-cat ninja_ missed something like _this_!”

“It’s not like _I_ knew, until I got here.” And after he realized, he wasn’t keen on telling Kakashi.

“It’s weird, though,” she says, frowning and rubbing her chin. “I don’t get how we’re able to talk, and understand one another. I don’t think we have the same words for things—not going by your notes, anyway—and you’re speaking perfectly fluently.”

That’s true. Now that he thinks about it, he remembers the way his mother and Kakashi didn’t understand one another, but he understood them both. “I should have noticed this sooner,” he says, then explains to Sakura.

She bites her lip. “All right, that’s _really_ weird. Maybe it’s a jutsu your dad put on you? Did Kakashi say anything about it?”

Riku shakes his head. “Not to me, anyway.”

“We can ask when he gets back. And maybe you should have a Hyuuga look at you. Their eye-jutsu can see just about anything; if there’s something on you, they’ll find it.”

“I don’t want them to take it off, though,” he points out.

She shakes her head. “No, of course not. This is it!” And she leads him into the shop.

All conversation turns toward food at that point, and stays there even after the meal, until they go back to the apartment to study long-dead Hokages and long-won wars.

“You’re better at this than I expected,” she says as she packs up, eyeing the clock that says it’s almost three. “The exam’s not very hard—it’s mostly about the obvious things, and in a few days, you’ll know all that. Then we can move on to something else.”

Riku knows he’s getting the very abbreviated version, but Konoha history doesn’t seem very thorough. Before he can puzzle that thought out, though, there’s a knock at the door. It is precisely three o’clock.

Mr. Gai escorts Riku and Sakura through part of the village at what Riku would ordinarily consider a quick jog. Mr. Gai chatters through it like he’s strolling, though, about nothing in particular. Sakura looks like she’s handling the pace better, but not well enough to join in the chatter.

When they get to their apparent destination, there’s a young man dressed eerily like Mr. Gai, who greets the teacher and then Sakura enthusiastically. Riku tries to discreetly catch his breath. Maybe Mr. Iruka was onto something, assigning him the stair exercise. Sakura, if she’s out of breath at all, hides it a lot better.

“Lee! Have you completed your own training?” At Lee’s nod, Mr. Gai beams. “Excellent! I require your help this afternoon. My eternal rival has asked me to assist his student and his nephew in their own youthful training. To begin with, I must focus on Mr. Riku. Will you accompany Miss Sakura in running laps around the training ground? Five should do to start, I think.”

“I would be honored! Thank you for entrusting this task to me. I won’t fail you, Sakura!”

Riku can’t help it; enthusiasm is catching and Sora and Selphie have _conditioned_ him to respond to cheerfulness and energy with good humor. He finds himself smiling and can’t stop.

Those two set off—Sakura looks a lot less eager than she had that morning—and Mr. Gai rounds on him.

“Now! I will need to get a measure of where your abilities lie.”

He proceeds to step through a series of exercises that Riku has, apparently, been doing incorrectly his whole life. His positioning for push-ups is wrong. He doesn’t pull himself up the right way during crunches. He doesn’t breathe right when he sprints. The new ones are equally frustrating: Mr. Gai makes him do a thing called “burpees” that he is sure he is going to loathe within the next three days.

He actually almost throws up once, which is the only time Mr. Gai backs off. Riku doesn’t get a pass, though; as soon as he can stand, he’s sent to walk around the clearing, sipping water until the feeling passes.

Then Mr. Gai shows him wind sprints.

After about an hour of all of this, Mr. Gai sends him once more to walk around the clearing, though this time, Mr. Gai walks with him.

“We will work on your conditioning, first, and your endurance. We will build you up each day, and with your youthful energy, you will surely succeed!” He raises one fist up, triumphantly, like a promise. “That will be this week, first. After you are more accustomed to this, then we will start with taijutsu forms.”

“We only have a month,” Riku points out. “There’s a physical portion on the test.”

Mr. Gai waves this away. “If, at the end of this month, you can only throw one punch, then it will be a _very good punch_ , and you will pass the test. That does not concern me. I am looking to your future! It must be built on a strong foundation.” He eyes Riku critically. “I think ten more burpees.”

Riku groans, but gets to doing them. And the ten push-ups after that. He tries to draw the line at the ten crunches after _that_ , but Mr. Gai levels a look of such disappointment at him that he ignores the way his body is screaming _no no no, no way in hell, just flop down and be done,_ ignores the overcooked-pasta feeling of his arms, and _tries_.

He winds up doing fifteen because his form is so crappy that five don’t count, but hey, he gets through them.

Mr. Gai doesn’t let him flop down after that, either, but _does_ help him to his feet. He walks them through a market, buys Riku a meal with some meat, some rice, and some vegetables, and tells him to be at the training ground at six thirty tomorrow morning.

Exhausted, feeling each and every step up to his apartment (Mr. Gai escorts him all the way to the door, then _leaps down from the railing_ , which makes all of Riku’s sore muscles twitch in horror), Riku almost, _almost_ puts aside his thought from earlier. Who cares if Konoha history doesn’t make sense? He gets all the way to the room, all the way to his _bed_ , is facedown on it and contemplating just passing out that way, when he groans and forces himself up. If he doesn’t figure it out now, it’s gonna bug him. So he changes into pajamas, collects his notes from the main room, and reads them on his bed.

There are huge chunks missing. Sakura left a map with him, after helping him label all the countries, ninja villages, and major cities. (“Those are just general locations, of course,” she says. “Most ninja villages can hide, one way or another, so the locations change sometimes, especially with the smaller ones.” He didn’t ask how Konoha could hide, what with the huge walls and gate and forest; frankly, he suspects the answer is “with magic,” although of course they would call it jutsu.)

There are countries mentioned as Konoha’s enemies in various wars that are never mentioned again; some aren’t even on the map, which means they were wiped out, he guesses. They’ve only gotten halfway through the Second Hokage, and Kakashi said there was a war thirteen years ago, and Sakura told him there was a Fourth Hokage but he died, so the Third Hokage came out of retirement.

She also told him that the Hokage is the strongest person in the village. Riku isn’t the sort of kid to kick old people around, but the old man didn’t look _that_ impressive when Riku saw him. If Sakura were more like Naruto, he’d suspect her of lying, but she’s very serious about her history.

“The older a ninja is,” she told him solemnly, “the more dangerous they are. Most don’t live past their twenties or thirties and still stay on active duty, so you _know_ someone’s strong when they’re really old. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have _gotten_ that old. Do you understand?”

He nodded, but the “most don’t live past their twenties” went onto his mental list of reasons why he should leave Konoha as quickly as possible. He has a long life of world-exploring ahead of him.

By contrast, Mr. Gai’s training might just do him in before he’s fourteen.

Naruto doesn’t come back that night. Riku’s vaguely uneasy—Kakashi said that Naruto would have a teacher, but also that Naruto would be staying in the village. By all rights, Naruto _should_ be back for dinner. Riku decides not to worry about it, since Naruto’s presumably with his teacher, but if he hasn’t shown up by tomorrow’s lessons, Riku will bring it up with Iruka.

///

“I heard you two were on a _date_ ,” is the first thing the blonde girl—Yamanaka Ino—says to Riku.

“It was a _lunch break_ ,” Sakura says, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Introduce us!”

It’s study session number five, and Sakura _did_ ask Riku if her friend could come before inflicting Yamanaka Ino on him. Ino’s dad is in the interrogation unit, whatever that is, and Ino wants to study Riku’s notes, Sakura explained. He didn’t really care at the time, so he said yes.

She wears a lot of purple, like Sakura wears red and Naruto wears orange. Is it common for ninja kids to color-code themselves like that? Maybe that’s why the shirt Kakashi left for him was yellow (and, if so, Riku apparently dodged getting _yellow pants_ as well, which— _thank you, Kakashi_ , that would be awful). If it is, it’ll make remembering names that much easier.

She also has a lot of bandages, although they look like they’re there to cover her up rather than because she’s hurt. Without them, she’d be showing a _lot_ of skin, and while Konoha is getting warmer, it isn’t _that_ warm.

He smiles when Sakura huffs and says, “Yamanaka Ino, meet Hatake Riku. Riku, this pig is my friend.”

That launches an argument eerily similar to some of Naruto’s. Riku shoves his hands in his pockets and shifts his weight while they shout at each other in the hall outside the apartment.

Naruto still hasn’t been back, although Iruka told him yesterday not to worry, that Naruto is “just training.” Sakura hasn’t seen either of her teammates since they left, and isn’t taking any missions without them; she still comes with Riku to his afternoon training sessions with Mr. Gai, though he usually sends her off to do more complicated things with Lee. (Two days ago, Mr. Gai had Riku do wind sprints in the same area as them, and during the slow-jog sections, Riku got to _watch_. Lee’s teaching Sakura some serious action-movie stuff; the kick he stepped her through was _beautiful_ , and it was almost physically painful for Riku to promise Mr. Gai not to try it before Mr. Gai says he’s ready.)

Most of what Sakura is teaching him now is theory and strategy, with some psychology and geography thrown in—although she quizzes him on history every time they meet. Her explanation has to do with study methods and retention; all Riku knows is that, by the time the month is over, he’ll probably be able to recite the official Konoha history in his sleep.

Sakura and Ino’s argument peters out without any help from him. Sakura casts one final scowl at her friend and then they both come in, making themselves at home.

At least Sakura told Riku it’s polite around here to offer tea. He doesn’t think his is any good, and still doesn’t drink the stuff, but he used some of his dwindling stash of munny to buy tea leaves, and on their third day of tutoring, Sakura taught him how to pour in the boiling water and steep the tea, all the while saying that there are whole _tea ceremonies_ , very strict affairs with even stricter rules.

Once the three are settled at the table (Ino with tea, Sakura and Riku with cups of water), Sakura begins her lecture about the human body, weak points to hit, and the theory behind throwing knives and other sharp, bladed things.

“Shouldn’t he be practicing this instead of just writing it down?” Ino asks, scooting her chair even closer to his and leaning into his personal space. Her head is incredibly close to his, close enough that he could almost feel her breath. Every time he moves, she leans into him more.

“You said you wanted to see his writing.” Sakura shrugs. “Besides, Mr. Gai is teaching Riku how to fight.”

Ino scoffs, then turns to Riku. “You don’t need a jounin instructor to teach you how to _throw_. How about _I_ show you?”

She leans into him some more, and Riku is more than a bit done with this situation. He is _not_ moving his seat all the way around the table just to get away from her. “I’m sure Mr. Gai will teach me when I’m ready.”

When he looks at Sakura, though, she’s glancing from him to Ino and back with a strange expression on her face. It isn’t until Ino looks at her as well that Sakura snaps out of it and compromises.

“I’m sure it won’t hurt to get you started. Unless you need more of his notes?” to Ino, which does not do anything good for Riku’s patience.

“I have other notes,” he says. “Notes that I know better than what you _just_ told me.” He doesn’t tell her that he regularly spends another two hours studying every night, to be sure he’ll keep up the pace that both Sakura and Mr. Iruka say is “amazing,” “groundbreaking,” and—most importantly—“might even mean we can test you early.”

Sakura shakes her head. “You need those to study.”

He’s about to point out that he doesn’t need _all_ of them to study, and that Ino can definitely take the ones on the Ninja Wars, when she reaches forward and takes the scroll he’s writing on.

“Hey!”

“This should be fine,” Ino says, ignoring him. “I mostly just want to tease Shikamaru with it.” She grins. “I bet he won’t be able to figure it out!”

“And if he does, he’ll probably get drafted into the code-breakers,” Sakura says. “You sure you want to risk that?”

Ino shrugs. “He’ll end up there anyway, even as lazy as he is. Maybe this’ll motivate him, huh?”

“Are we going to practice today?” Riku asks, leaning back in his chair. “Or are you two just going to talk?”

Maybe it’s out of revenge for that comment, but knife-throwing practice with the girls turns out even worse than Riku imagined.

Sakura is nice. She was nice even when he revealed his illiteracy to her and messed up her Kakashi-given task. Ino, on the other hand, is _mean_ , and she _pinches him_ when he misses, or stands wrong, or holds the knives wrong, or throws them wrong. She pinches with her _nails_. She doesn’t make him do wind sprints or lunges or _burpees_ , which, Riku is 3000% sure, Mr. Gai will, whenever he gets around to teaching Riku weapons.

“What? It works,” is all she says in defense of her methods, and that’s only when Sakura glares at her. She doesn’t seem to care when Riku glares or swats her hands away, and she smirks with demonic glee when he yelps at a particularly vicious pinch to his ribs.

His aim does improve—minimally—but he doesn’t think it’s worth all the sore red spots. Not to mention when she goes for his butt. After that, he says, “How about I do push-ups when I miss?” Ino actually looks put out, and a little disgusted, but the next time he misses, he does indeed drop and give her ten, dodging her pinch and feeling a swell of satisfaction.

As it turns out, throwing knives has very little in common with throwing coconuts, which is as close as Riku came on the Islands. Everything from hand positioning to throwing motion to force is different, and aiming is much harder with a comparatively smaller projectile. At least the targets aren’t human-shaped. Ino suggested they should be, but Sakura vetoed her, saying that the genin exam targets aren’t.

Riku’s grateful. He couldn’t hit a person in the head, even a fake-target-person. He knows that’s what this training is for, knows that when the girls argue about dodging versus blocking they are referring to other people throwing knives at _his_ head, but he can’t make it click. It isn’t like fighting with Sora, which was fun, first acting out things they’d read in books then just doing it on their own. They figured out footing and stance and how to hold the swords on their own, experimented with different techniques and styles until they found what was most comfortable and effective.

It was _fun_ , then. They never tried to seriously hurt each other. Riku breaking Sora’s arm ruined that, but here, no one would understand what his problem is. Sparring in Konoha isn’t for fun: it’s for learning how to hurt other people, on purpose, and trying to avoid getting hurt.

He understands all of that, and he can’t see himself staying here. Maybe this was why his dad sucked at being a ninja. Maybe his dad passed it onto Riku, this inability to be _comfortable_ with hurting other people. Riku isn’t sure, anymore, that it’s a bad thing; not when, with it, throwing knives at someone’s head is _wrong_.

He doesn’t say anything to the girls, and keeps his thoughts to himself as they head over to Mr. Gai’s training ground. Ino’s just escorting them, and she and Sakura talk about flowers, of all things.

Today, after having him warm up, Mr. Gai goes over how to fall, and looks pleasantly surprised when Riku demonstrates that he actually knows this one thing. He still makes Riku practice for an hour before moving on to showing Riku how to _stand_ —this, like falling, was something Riku really took for granted.

Now that he has to do sit-ups when he’s wrong, Riku’s really tired of all the things he took for granted coming back to bite him in the ass.

Every day, he seems to be the same level of exhausted when he comes home, but Mr. Gai says he’s improving, and Mr. Gai seems generally trustworthy. (Riku is _still_ not sure how he got roped into owing _Kakashi_.) At least with his more academic studies, he can _tell_ that he’s getting better; there’s more stuff that he remembers, now. While he makes and then eats dinner, he reviews the lead-up to the First Ninja War, which he actually starts in the shower, talking himself through all the factors he can remember.

He doesn’t bother making Naruto a plate—if Naruto, for whatever reason, shows up again tonight or tomorrow, there are other leftovers and even ramen for him to eat.

Besides, Riku has to keep _himself_ fed first. Naruto has other ways of getting munny (and has more than Riku, anyway), but Riku is stuck with what Kakashi gave him before leaving for a month. There’s a bit left, but he’s worried about running out sometime in the next couple weeks. If he has to, he can live off ramen (Naruto did it), but he’d really rather not.

After eating, he practices his Konoha writing, using a couple of children’s practice scrolls (with pictures!) that Sakura brought for him on day two. Now, he’s on food and names, copying the symbols out painstakingly and then practicing them over and over so they’ll come more naturally.

When his brain and his muscles are begging for mercy, he climbs onto his mattress, sparing a sour look for Naruto’s not-a-mattress-on-the-floor bed, which hasn’t been used in almost a week. He keeps the curtains open. It’s silly, but he likes falling asleep to the night sky, even if he doesn’t recognize any of the constellations.

///

The next day, Ino’s absent. Sakura is distracted for the first hour.

They’re going over chakra theory, specifically chakra points on the human body. After the third question that Riku asks only to get a “Hmmmm,” he sighs and rolls up the scroll. It’s a lot harder to do pointedly than closing a book, so he doesn’t get Sakura’s attention right away. He has to _ask_.

“What’s wrong?”

She frowns. “What? No, I—oh.” She glances at the closed scroll, the anatomy chart in front of her, and shakes herself. “Sorry. I was distracted. It won’t happen again.”

“Is your friend okay?” He’s guessing, because Sakura hasn’t given a reason for why Ino isn’t here, and considering how clingy she was, Riku expected her to show up.

“Ino’s fine.” Sakura bites her lip, then shakes her head. “Her teammate’s in the hospital, though. He’s… He should be fine.”

Riku frowns. With the hesitation, the “ _should_ be fine,” and Ino’s absence, he wonders how hurt the teammate is. If, like when it was Sora, the distressing part isn’t so much how _badly_ the guy’s hurt, but _that_ he’s hurt.

“It’s almost lunch,” he says. “We could take them some.” He would much rather cook than try to figure the chakra system out on his own.

Sakura perks up. “You wouldn’t mind? I could stay longer tonight, to make up for it.”

“Sure.” He’s almost completely certain that, like him, she leaves training with Mr. Gai (or Lee, in her case) ready to drop. He’s proven to himself that he can keep going, make dinner, and even go over his notes, but he _definitely_ doesn’t feel up to socializing. (Naruto’s absence may be a good thing, really.) If Sakura’s the same, then this is an empty promise, but that’s okay. Friends are more important than Riku understanding chakra points _today_.

Instead of letting him cook, though, Sakura leads him to a restaurant that serves barbeque. Riku’s not familiar with any of the spices or sauces, based on how they smell; when he says as much, Sakura orders him a little of everything. It’s a lot of food, and he carries most of it in exchange for not paying. Sakura assures him that it’s fine, she doesn’t mind, and adds that all of the food will probably be eaten, but he can have the leftovers if there are any.

On the way, she talks about the chuunin exams. There were preliminaries; Sakura got picked off by a girl from another village who fought with a gigantic _fan_ ; Ino’s teammate (Chouji) fought a scary kid from the same village.

“Which village?”

“Suna,” she says. It takes Riku a moment. The Village Hidden in the Sand, located in a rather large country to the west of Konoha.

“Are there a lot of people from other villages?”

“Not really. Most of them dropped out in the earlier exams; Gaara of the Desert and Temari are the only ones in the semifinals. Most hidden villages don’t send very many genin, anyway—only our allies.”

The explanation for why a village would send their genin to another village’s exams (and the reasons why some villages don’t) takes the rest of the walk to the hospital, although it all boils down to “genin show off in the exams to get clients for their villages” and “villages don’t trust other villages,” respectively. Sakura doesn’t mention anything about spying on the other villages, which makes him wonder whether that’s even occurred to her, or whether it’s the sort of thing everyone knows but no one talks about. Then he gets to watch Sakura strong-arm a harried-looking nurse into letting them bring food into the hospital.

“He _can_ eat,” Sakura says, contradicting the nurse. “Ino said he had a regular breakfast yesterday. He was on liquids at first, though, and he just hated that.” Before opening the door, she spins around and pins him with a glare. “ _Don’t_ mention his weight, alright? Whatever you do. Don’t say a word.”

Riku nods, starting to regret ever offering to come with her. On the other hand, the food smells delicious and he’s carried it this far.

As it turns out, Chouji is neither emaciated nor obese; he’s maybe a little sturdier than Wakka, which is _nothing_. And he’s smiling so broadly as Riku carefully sets the packages of food on his lap-table that Riku can’t imagine calling him names.

Ino and a dark-haired boy have chairs on either side of him, although Ino gives hers to Riku. She and Sakura sit on the bed, looking like they’ll fall off at any second.

“Team 10,” Sakura says, apparently referring to the three kids, “this is Kakashi’s nephew, Riku. Riku, that’s Nara Shikamaru,” she indicates the boy sitting down beside the bed, “and this is Akimichi Chouji. Their team leader is Asuma, but he’s busy right now.”

Shikamaru nods to Riku, while Chouji says, “Nice to meet you!” far too enthusiastically for someone in a hospital. His teammates look startled at his enthusiasm, so Riku guesses that bringing lunch really was a good idea.

The others break their chopsticks and say, “Let’s eat.” Riku copies Sakura, wishing (not for the first time) that he knew about chopsticks when he was packing. By now, he’s marginally used to them, although eating with other people demonstrates just how much slower and more awkward he is compared to kids who’ve used them all their lives.

He’s so focused on not dropping any of his—meat, it looks like, though not fish—that he doesn’t immediately notice Ino staring at him. He notices when Shikamaru mutters something and then reaches over, fixing his grip on the sticks.

Face heating up, he glances at the other boy. Shikamaru doesn’t even look at him; he’s eating his own food, and just shrugs when Riku thanks him.

At least he isn’t a jerk about it. Riku swallows his embarrassment and gets through the rest of his meat. Rice is still impossible, though, so after one pathetic attempt, he passes his to Chouji.

“You sure?” Chouji asks, even as he takes the little paper box from Riku.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Thanks!”

Ino similarly passes her box to Chouji, although Sakura and Shikamaru finish theirs. Chouji _demolishes_ the food, and when he’s done, pats his stomach with obvious satisfaction.

“Thanks for bringing lunch!” he says with another wide smile.

Sakura shakes her head. “It was Riku’s idea.” Then she shoots him a look, as if to say that he had better not bring up that she paid for it. At least, that’s what he _assumes_ the look means.

“You’re not a genin yet, right?” Shikamaru asks after a few moments of awkward silence.

“Not _yet_.”

Sakura leans forward. “I forgot to ask, have you talked to Iruka about taking your exam orally?”

Riku winces. “Not yet,” he repeats. He’s sort of been hoping he’ll miraculously absorb the language, or think of a good excuse for an oral rather than written exam. At this point, barring breaking his _own_ arm, all he has is the truth.

Which will inevitably get back to Kakashi, and to Naruto and Sasuke. He is _not_ looking forward to the boys finding out.

“Tell him tomorrow,” Sakura says, tone brooking no arguments. “And ask him when _he_ thinks you’ll be ready to take the exam.”

“It’s not very hard,” Chouji volunteers. “Shikamaru slept through most of it.”

Riku glances at Shikamaru. The kid slouches in his seat, hands jammed in his pockets and an expression of annoyed boredom stuck on his face. He looks like he would sleep through his tests, although whether he also _passes_ them is a mystery.

Despite that, Sakura and Ino talk about him like he could figure out how to translate from Riku’s language into ninja-language—in writing, because Riku is apparently doing that while speaking without any sort of effort. Still, Riku is _trying_ to make sense of ninja-writing, and unless it’s a lot easier the other way around, Shikamaru will have to be very smart to even keep up.

“It’s stuff _we’ve_ been doing for years,” Ino adds. “Then again, he’s Kakashi’s nephew.” She says it like being Kakashi’s nephew will magically make Riku pass the test.

“I’m sure I’ll do fine,” he tells them, sounding more confident than he truly feels. He _does_ think he’ll pass if he doesn’t have to write anything, so that isn’t really a lie.

The exam isn’t the part he’s interested in, though; the exam will just tell him if he’s ready to leave or not. If he can pass, he’s good enough to go home, he figures. (He’s still on the fence about staying or leaving, but, well, if he _plans_ to leave and then changes his mind, that’s better than deciding to stay and then finding out that he really can’t stay.)

If he doesn’t pass, then… Well, he’ll think of something. Study and train until Kakashi takes his team out on an away mission. (Iruka mentioned that those exist, though he said it as a warning for _Riku_ not to expect to get one, when Riku asked where the nearest beach is.) With Kakashi and Naruto out of the village—just like they are now—Riku won’t have to worry about sneaking away.

That’s a perfectly good Plan C, he decides, if Plan A is staying and Plan B is walking away after his genin test. Kairi and Sora never really appreciate having backup plans, and Riku is usually too impatient to bother with them himself, but since he’s dealing with _ninjas_ , he might need it.

Also, he should probably start thinking of some way to block or trash the bridge so that no one can follow him. It’s probably overkill, but on the off chance that Kakashi or someone else cares, he’d rather not wake up to a ninja knocking on the front door again. Not to mention what that would do to his mom.

During Riku’s thoughts, Ino and Sakura start talking about the chuunin exams, _again_ , the Sand team in particular this time. Shikamaru, apparently, fought the third team member and won; is that because Shikamaru is just better than Chouji and Sakura, or did Shikamaru have the best luck and got the worst fighter on the Sand team?

Shikamaru seems to think that’s the case, anyway. He doesn’t say he got lucky, but he does say his guy was easy to outsmart.

“At least Sasuke’s match will be interesting,” Ino says, shifting trains of thought. “I mean, Byakugan versus Sharingan? Poor Hinata, though.” Then she slants a look Sakura’s way that has trouble written all over it. “And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my promise. I’ll kick Temari’s ass for you in the finals.”

Shikamaru yawns, a bone-cracking maneuver that interrupts anything Sakura might have been about to say, and moves his chair closer to the bed, until he can cross his arms over the lap-table and lay his head down on them.

Ino shoves him off. “You can’t go to sleep! We’re _talking_.”

“You’re talking,” he says, resettling himself on the table. “And you’re annoying.”

 _That_ sets Ino off on what sounds like a well-rehearsed rant; the kind that Sora would get when he came home with bad grades, or Kairi when she didn’t remember to tell her mother she’d be on the other island with them. Watching from the sidelines makes Riku miss those days, a bit, back when they all went to the same school and had dinner at each other’s houses and stayed up all night looking at the stars.

Chouji tries to play mediator to his friends, but it’s a lost cause, and he doesn’t seem to be trying too hard anyway.

Sakura pulls Riku out of the room after a couple minutes. When they say goodbye, only Chouji seems to notice. He waves, but doesn’t say anything. Ino and Shikamaru keep arguing.

“I think this is the first time they’ve really fought since Chouji went into the hospital,” Sakura tells Riku as they walk out. “It’s good for them.”

“What happened to him, anyway? How’d he end up…?” Riku nods to the hospital behind them.

“It was Gaara. I told you that, right? It was _brutal_. They were the first match, and… Gaara was trying to _kill_ him. If Chouji hadn’t forfeited… His teacher, Asuma, had to jump in the ring to get him away from Gaara. _After_ he gave up.”

“Oh.” If that isn’t the _best reason ever_ to ditch this place, Riku doesn’t know what is. Chouji isn’t any older than him or Sakura, and no one talked about Gaara like he’s an adult picking on kids.

“Did he get kicked out?”

Sakura frowns. “Chouji gave up. They didn’t need to kick him out.”

Shaking his head, Riku clarifies, “Not him. Gaara.” At her blank look, he adds, “For trying to kill Chouji?”

“No. That’s allowed. He got a warning for doing it after Chouji gave up, but that was all. He won. He’s going to be in the semifinals.” Sakura bites her lip, hands twisting together in front of her. “Naruto and Sasuke want to fight him. Naruto especially. Chouji’s an old friend of his. And I think Shikamaru does too, he’s just quieter about it.”

Ninja kids try to kill other ninja kids and _win_. There’s no punishment for it, just a warning, so the other ninja kids have to try to step in, if they can, to get justice.

Riku decides he really does not like Konoha much at all. He can’t imagine growing up here, knowing that he could go up against someone like Gaara and get _killed—_ that his _friends_ could do it. No wonder Shikamaru and Ino are acting oddly; Riku would, too, if it had been Sora or Kairi.

Now he knows why Iruka didn’t react much to Riku’s account of breaking Sora’s arm. That’s probably common around here. If Riku mentioned how everyone back home reacted, Iruka might have been surprised at _that_. In retrospect, only Naruto seemed upset, and Riku can’t remember what exactly Naruto was upset about: Riku breaking his friend’s arm, which would be _healthy_ and _good_ to be upset about, or something else, that only makes sense to these ninjas?

“Why are you a ninja?” he asks suddenly.

Sakura stops walking to stare at him. “What?”

He asks again.

“I… Can we sit down?”

“Sure.”

It takes a few minutes to find a place to sit that isn’t a restaurant or in the middle of the street. They’re silent; Sakura looks thoughtful, while Riku feels a bit sick, still. Finally, they come across a bench and sit, ample space between them.

Sakura’s hands stay in her lap, clenched. Her back is ridiculously straight.

“I wanted to be a ninja,” she says. “I was… Well, when I was six, I found out my dad had remarried. Not,” and she looks up at this, “that I don’t love my mom! I do! She’s the only mother I’ve ever known, and she’s never treated me as anything less than her daughter.” She shakes her head. “None of that matters. Anyway. Because my birth mother died in battle, I was automatically enrolled in the Academy. And my mom and dad are ninja, anyway. They’d have filled out the forms, if I said I wanted that. I wanted it.”

Smiling faintly, she says, “I barely knew a thing about ninja, or being one, I just knew that everyone looked up to them.” Then she glances at Riku and laughs. “It sounds silly now, but I was really serious about it then. And I wasn’t getting along with the kids my age, so I thought going to the Academy would be…different.”

“Different isn’t always better,” Riku says. He knows that one personally; his mother thought moving to an island where no one knew about his father would be different, and it was. It was still pretty awful at times, especially at first.

She nods, falling silent again for a long minute. Riku glances around, at the cobblestones, the plants around them, the nearby buildings.

It’s all so, so different from the Islands.

“That’s not my reason anymore,” says Sakura into the silence. Riku looks at her. “Now, I want to keep up with Naruto and Sasuke. Things…changed, in the forest, or maybe before that. In Wave.”

 _That_ gets Riku’s attention. “Wave?”

Sakura explains: they had a mission to a country called Wave, which has beaches and a bunch of starving people. They helped a bridge-builder, fought enemy ninjas, and Sasuke almost died. Sasuke also gained his Sharingan, whatever that is, somehow. When they left, the bridge was just about done.

“And then, in the forest, they were both unconscious, and I had to defend them. It was… It would have been better if one of them had been awake.” She bites her lip, eyes growing watery, and Riku hopes she isn’t about to cry. At this rate, only Sasuke stands between him and making all of his uncle’s students tear up. “I’ve never felt so _useless_ before. They were just—they’d been fighting, both of them, and they were hurt. Sasuke was feverish. All I could do was watch them. I couldn’t even defend them, not really.” She squeezes her eyes closed, and her hands clench tight on her knees, but she doesn’t start crying.

Riku goes back to pointedly eyeing the landscape while she collects herself. It doesn’t take as long.

“A team from Sound attacked us. I… People from other teams, like Lee, had to help me, and we still almost died. If Sasuke hadn’t woken up when he did…”

His own hands start to clench, involuntarily. He can’t—Sakura is a _nice_ girl. She’s good at fighting, and great at teaching. Bad enough to hear that, like Naruto, she never got to meet her birth mother. (At least she has both a mom and a dad who love her. At least she grew up with _that_ much.) To think that she almost died…

“Good thing he woke up, then,” Riku says. When she glances at him out of the corner of her eye, he smiles. “That’s what your team’s for, right? And you tried to help them, too, it sounds like.”

She nods, smiling as well, although she doesn’t look happy. More like miserable, really: her face is too pale, her hands are shaking a bit, and her eyes are still wet. He doesn’t comment on it.

“Why did you come here?”

Caught off-guard by the question, Riku startles. “Uh.”

She ducks her head. “You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.”

“It’s okay. You answered my question. Besides, Naruto already knows.” He shrugs. “I broke my best friend’s arm. We were sparring, and it was an accident. After that, my mom wrote to Kakashi and he came to get me.”

“Oh.” She tilts her head, quiet for a few moments. “So that was what he meant when he said your mother asked him to make you a ninja?”

“Yeah.”

“But that doesn’t answer why _you_ want to be a ninja,” Sakura points out.

Riku shrugs. “I don’t want to hurt any of my friends again. I don’t want to worry my mother. It wasn’t a hard decision.”

It isn’t as compelling as her reason, but then, he’s going to leave as soon as he passes his genin test and she’s going to keep on being a ninja. Maybe if he never broke Sora’s arm—or if he grew up here in Konoha—he’d want to be like her: dedicated to being a ninja, to fighting people to protect his friends even when he’s facing death.

Now, though, he can’t; he can still smell Sora’s blood, if he thinks about it. Can still picture Sora, arm bent all wrong.

He can’t fault anyone for defending themselves, but to have a competition that allows kids to try to kill each other is sick, and he wants no part of it. He just wants to go back home to his mother, to Sora and Kairi and the beaches and the raft.

Saying goodbye to Sakura after all that is awkward. She doesn’t mention her promise to continue the chakra lesson, and he doesn’t bring it up. They head in opposite directions, and Riku spends more of his munny than he should on the weird sticky and sweet dumplings Sakura introduced him to, the first day she started teaching him. Dango, the man selling it calls the little skewered balls; Riku eats three of them off the stick as he walked home.

Kairi would like the dango, he thinks. Sora, too.

When he gets home, he puts away the scrolls that he just left on the table earlier, before he and Sakura went out to lunch. After searching for a bit, he pulls out a bottle of bleach, along with rubber gloves and sponges, all from when he first cleaned the bathroom. It’s been over a week, now. He gets to work.

Cleaning is mindless, and he catches himself zoning out more than once. Going over the Second Ninja War doesn’t help. By the time he finishes, he’s hungry again. His nose feels a bit raw, and oddly numb; he can’t smell nearly as much as he’s used to. Dinner tastes a bit duller as well.

It’s a relief. He falls onto his mattress and pulls the sheets and blankets around him like a cocoon. He doesn’t close the curtains. Outside, the sun is setting, turning the sky orange and yellow and red above that cliff with the faces (of the Hokages, he knows now, three of them dead) carved into it. He rolls over, facing the bedroom wall, and even with his eyes closed and his sense of smell muted, he can’t convince himself that he’s back on the Islands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eventually, I will not end sections/chapters with Riku falling asleep. Someday.


	7. The Genin Exam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku loses some fights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have fiddled with this chapter _so much_. There are bits I'm really happy with and other parts that...well, that no longer irritate the shit out of me.
> 
> This chapter is for everyone who's left kudos and comments: you folks are awesome and I appreciate all of you.

Riku walks into Mr. Iruka’s classroom wearing the last of his clean clothes; he didn’t realize how low he was, since he’s storing them in basically the kitchen, until he got dressed this morning. That means he’s in black shorts and a thin red tank-top while every other piece of clothing he owns is in the washing machine back at the apartment. He doesn’t look out of place in Konoha, but he shivers his way through Mr. Gai’s morning routine. Apparently, flexibility and gymnastics training constitutes “warming up for the day” for Mr. Gai—well, that and jogging, and given that Riku has heard _…things…_ about Lee’s morning routine, he is _totally, one-hundred-percent_ okay with what he’s doing.

(Who runs _double digits_ of laps around _anything_ at six in the morning? _Who?_ Rock Lee is who.)

The workout does, in fact, warm him up, but by the time he’s heading to the Academy, he’s shivering again.

His level of desperation (he is _really not liking_ these temperatures, okay) leads him to try on one of Naruto’s jackets, since he didn’t pack any and Naruto isn’t using it. It doesn’t fit, and he doesn’t have enough munny left to buy himself one that does.

“Good morning,” Mr. Iruka says, setting aside a stack of papers. “I heard you met Team Ten yesterday. What did you think?”

Riku shrugs. “They’re okay.” Ino’s clingy, Chouji’s nice, and Shikamaru’s all right for a guy who tried to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. “Where’d you hear about that?”

“Around. We ninjas are terrible gossips,” Mr. Iruka says with a grin. “Now, I think you’re just about ready for the genin exam—you’ve been practicing the clone and transformation techniques on your own, right?”

“Yeah. Um. About that.”

The teacher’s expression goes from cheerful to disappointed in four words. “Riku. If you don’t practice—”

“Not _that._ ” He knows the value of practicing; at least it makes sense for the jutsu, although he has some doubts about just how _often_ Mr. Gai has him practice falling. And standing. Don’t even get Riku started on the burpees and the wind sprints and the lunges, the sit-ups, the push-ups, and the recently added _pull-ups_. “I mean, about the exam.”

“Oh. What about it?”

Riku fidgets his hands in his pockets. There’s a hangnail on his left thumb; he picks at it. “Could I take the written part verbally?”

A pause.

“It’s called the written section for a reason,” Mr. Iruka says.

“Right. But, the thing is…” Riku sighs and pulls his hand out of his pocket to bite the hangnail off. “I can’t—I can’t _write_ , okay, or read. Not your kind of reading and writing, anyway, not enough to take a _test_.”

Another pause.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Yeah, well, I can prove it.” And Riku does.

Mr. Iruka has him write out sentences as he says them. Has Riku write his name, and Mr. Iruka’s. Gives him some algebra, although Riku doesn’t know that’s what it is until Mr. Iruka reads the equations out loud and tells Riku to solve them.

Then he has Riku stand still and uses some sort of jutsu on him. It feels a bit like a rush of wind blowing through Riku’s body; it’s not painful, but it’s not pleasant, either. Riku shivers again and pulls his arms closer to his body, and Mr. Iruka still looks unhappy, but not like he disbelieves Riku.

“Does anyone else know about this?” he asks. “Your uncle? Mr. Gai? The Hokage?”

Riku makes a face. “Sakura and Team Ten. I didn’t figure it out myself until after Kakashi left.”

That earns him a flat stare. “You didn’t notice you couldn’t _read_ until _after_ you were here for several days?”

Glaring back, Riku defends himself. “I didn’t realize it was _writing_. I just thought it was a lot of weird art, or something.”

Mr. Iruka shakes his head, and says something under his breath. Riku catches the word “ninja,” but nothing else; he’s busy glaring at the blackboard behind Mr. Iruka, with its weird characters. There’s the symbol for “Konoha,” but he’s not sure about the rest; he’s still in the simple children’s scrolls, and he’s only recently graduated to verbs. 

“You can take the exam orally,” he’s finally told, after staring at the blackboard for what feels like an eternity.

He glances at Mr. Iruka and finds the teacher leaning back in his seat, rubbing his temples like Riku’s given him a headache. Whatever. Riku is cold and sore and sick of this place. He wants to be back in balmy Destiny Islands, where nobody ever made him run laps. Where he can read at the same level as other people his age. Where _kids his age_ aren’t sent to the hospital. (Except, of course, when it’s him sending Sora to the hospital.)

“Come back this afternoon. Two—no, three o’clock. You’ll take all your tests at once. Be sure to have lunch, but don’t eat _right_ before the exam, or nerves may make you throw up. If there’s anything you’re not sure about, you can ask me now. I’ll be busy until the exam, and I won’t be able to help you out during it. Do you understand?”

Riku nods; he knows how tests work.

“Great. Now, any questions?”

About to shake his head, he pauses. “It’s not about the test,” he starts, eyeing Mr. Iruka to see if he’ll answer it anyway.

He shouldn’t worry. Mr. Iruka’s expression clears, and he smiles. “Go ahead,” he says, and his tone is encouraging. Like Riku is a pain in the butt as a student, but Iruka won’t hold that against him.

“Naruto doesn’t have any jackets that fit me,” he says, tugging at his shirt. “I didn’t pack any, when I came, and I don’t have munny for a new one.” It’s stupid and not important and—and unjustifiable, if he passes the test and then leaves right after asking Mr. Iruka to buy him a jacket, but. Riku’s cold, and Mr. Iruka’s one of the most helpful people here. It’ll be a nice memento.

Mr. Iruka stills. Riku watches his face start to turn angry again, before he seems to get control of himself and makes his face blank. “You don’t have _any_ munny?”

“Well, I have a _little_ left, but that’s for food…” He catches himself, and adds, “I’ve been careful with it. I only spend it on stuff I _need_.” The last thing he needs is Mr. Iruka telling his uncle that he blew through all the munny and then begged for something as frivolous as a _jacket_. It isn’t even raining or anything.

Riku’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have asked. Before he can tell Mr. Iruka to just forget about it, though, he’s interrupted by an explosive sigh from the man. (He might flinch a bit at that, but luckily, Mr. Iruka isn’t looking at him at all.)

“I see.” Mr. Iruka rubs his face with one hand. “All right. Let’s do this. Come by at four for your exam, and afterwards, we’ll get dinner and you can tell me what, exactly, you need.”

“It’s just a jacket.” It’s important to him, that Mr. Iruka knows he’s been cautious, he’s been frugal, he’s been _smart with the munny_. Not just because Mr. Iruka could tattle on him to Kakashi, but also because this man has been teaching Riku for a month when he has a whole class full of kids who don’t need a remedial class on ninja skills. “I swear, that’s it.”

“Riku,” Mr. Iruka says, and his tone is scarily calm. Riku freezes, watching him. “I’m sure there are things that Naruto or Sakura or your uncle forgot to mention. Like the written language. It’s not your fault that you don’t know, but you need to tell me so I can help you, all right?”

His little mental list of things to ask Kakashi springs immediately to mind. “All right.”

“Great. So I’ll see you at four, then.”

That seems like a pretty clear “so get lost until then” to Riku. “Okay.” He leaves, goes back home, and dithers in the main room until Sakura comes by. When he tells her that the exam is _today_ , she wishes him good luck, then says she needs to check on some things—and that she’ll let Mr. Gai know not to expect him. She disappears after that, with only a quick goodbye.

He hadn’t expected her to make him study _right_ before his test, but. Well. She could’ve stuck around, given him some tips or something. Had lunch. Reassured him that he’s definitely gonna pass. (She could’ve stayed, and he could’ve maybe rethought how much he wants to leave, because it’s easy to remember all his reasons when it’s still dark out and his goosebumps have goosebumps, but it’s harder when Sakura’s next to him, breaking down concepts into understandable chunks in her calm, authoritative voice.)

Pulling his laundry out of the washer, hanging it up, and starting a new load (the last one, thank Leviathan) does nothing to improve his mood, so he decides that he should channel Sora and sleep until noon. Maybe, after he’s done that and eaten, he’ll feel less listless.

He wakes up at around one, which is even _worse_ than Sora generally manages. Laughing at himself, he stretches his arms; he feels a lot better, but also lethargic enough to go back to sleep until the test. That’s ridiculous, though, and he can practically hear his mother teasing him for it. He pulls himself up and lazily runs through all the hand seals as he walks into the kitchen. He would practice actual jutsu for the test, but he doesn’t have enough chakra to waste any, and besides, he’s great at the _three_ he’s learned so far.

Inspecting the fridge leads to the expected but still dismaying discovery that it’s mostly empty. That leaves rice or ramen for lunch, along with the juice that he hasn’t finished off yet. There isn’t very much of _that_ left, though.

He can eat rice with his fingers. It’s messy and embarrassing, but he’s alone in the apartment and it’s that or sodium-drenched instant-ramen that will make the kitchen (and, from there, the rest of the apartment) smell for the rest of the day.

While he’s waiting for the rice to finish microwaving, he starts hanging up the last of his now-clean but wet laundry. He can’t wait to get home, where there are _driers_. And, he thinks, _forks_ , sullenly giving chopsticks another try. Where the rice clumps together the chopsticks work fine, but then there are always the grains that aren’t clumped, and sometimes Riku squeezes the chopsticks too hard and the clump splits into a pile of rice, mocking him. This time, with no one around to tell him it’s terrible manners, he goes after those piles with his fingers.

After he finishes, he straps his pouch of knives to his thigh, the way Sakura taught him. He probably doesn’t need anything else, but he does a visual sweep of the apartment anyway, double-checking to make sure he’s not missing anything obvious.

He’s just tugging on his ninja sandals—he might as well dress the part for this test; he’s also in the yellow shirt and black pants Kakashi left him—when there’s a knock on the door. Riku straightens, taps his shoe against the floor to test the fit, and opens it, blinking in shock when he sees Sakura.

“I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”

She grins at him. “I wasn’t about to _abandon_ you. I just had to check on some things, like I _told_ you. I’m glad you finally talked to Iruka—you _did_ talk to Iruka about the written section, didn’t you?”

Leaning against the doorframe, Riku puts a hand over his heart, mock-offended. “Of course I did. He’s letting me tell him my answers, or something.”

“That’s great!” And she looks like she might hug him, for a second, before evidently rethinking that plan.

He’s barely known this girl for a few weeks, but he thinks he’s a little bit _actually_ offended. Why doesn’t he rate a hug? Are they not good enough friends to give each other hugs?

“Yeah.” A pause. “Think I’ll pass?” She probably has a better idea than he does, since she’s actually passed it before.

Her excitement dims, her expression turning serious, but she doesn’t say no. “Your aim _could_ use some work,” she says, like she’s turning it over in her mind. That’s not really comforting. “And there are other things that Iruka will test for. I think you will, yes…” She bites her lip, then takes a deep breath. “Here, come with me, I want to show you something.”

Riku spots his coin-purse on the table just before shutting the door, and doubles back for it with a vengeful, “Aha!” Of _course_ he almost left all his munny behind. Sakura watches him with what looks like amusement as he rejoins her, locking the door behind him.

She quizzes him while they walk: names of the previous Hokages, current diplomatic status with half a dozen Hidden Villages, start and end years for all three of the Great Ninja Wars, strengths and weaknesses of genjutsu, taijutsu, and ninjutsu… 

Then she gets into more specifics, situations they’ve touched on but not gone over. The current balance of power between the Elemental Countries, the hierarchy of the Elemental Countries’ “daimyos” compared to the Hidden Villages’ Kages, Fire Country’s top four exports, the standard level of expected danger for a D-rank mission versus a C-rank mission versus a B- or A-rank mission, and who qualifies to even _see_ S-rank missions.

About twenty minutes later, they reach the bottom of a huge staircase, and Sakura starts asking about things they haven’t ever even discussed.

“Most Academy students have the skills to do D-rank missions,” she says. “So why are they only allowed to start taking them once they’re genin?”

Riku mulls over that as they climb up the steps. “D-ranks are basically chores,” he says, just thinking out loud. “Most _civilians_ are qualified to complete them.” Which, Academy students _are_ civilians… He narrows his eyes. “Is there a rule that civilians can’t take missions?”

Sakura hums. “There’s no law that specifically says certain groups _can’t_ take missions.”

Okay, dead end. Riku tries again. “Is it about munny?”

“What about munny?”

Does that mean he’s on the right track, or is Sakura baiting him? What _about_ munny?

Wait. 

Didn’t Sakura and Sasuke have weird reactions to something about munny…? After some thought, he dredges up the memory: he made a random comment about getting a job, and Sakura basically told him that members of ninja clans don’t have jobs. Then Sasuke corrected her and said that they _could_ , but not if they were ninjas.

So. Ninjas don’t have other jobs; their whole job _is_ being a ninja. Which means any munny they get has to _come from_ being a ninja.

“Do you get paid, just for being a ninja?”

“Nope,” Sakura pops the “p,” grinning at him.

Right track. Okay. Riku thinks about it; they climb maybe twelve, maybe fourteen steps before he frowns. “Do genin live on their own? Do you live with your parents?” 

“I live with my parents.” Riku _feels_ his face fall, and Sakura tips him a smile. “But genin _can_ live on their own. Naruto and Sasuke both do.”

“Because they can earn munny?”

Again, she hums, and he gets the impression that means “close but not quite.” She doesn’t say anything else.

As they reach a marker, she pauses, eyes on him. “Well?”

“Is it because genin need it, and Academy students don’t?”

“Why would we, though?”

“To live on your own?”

This time, she hums, but apparently decides that he got close enough. “Sort of. It’s to support ourselves. If your family can’t support you, as an Academy student, you get support; meals, rent, all of that. Once you’re a genin, though, you have to start giving back. There are always enough D-ranks for all the genin—if the citizens don’t put up enough, the Hokage will.”

“Huh.” That seems weird to Riku, until he compares ninjas not to regular community-members, but to the pirate-hunters. Back on the Islands, the people who joined the militias to seek out and deal with pirates would be supported by their home communities. The island his mother is still on could afford to support ten members, and it was a big deal two years ago when they sponsored Rinoa Heartily as the tenth.

Konoha is a lot bigger, though, and clearly richer. It shouldn’t really be shocking that they can effectively sponsor hundreds if not thousands of militia members, especially not if some of the cost comes from outside the village itself, in the form of missions from the daimyo, merchants, and even foreign citizens.

Although Riku’s not sure “militia” is the right word; “military” seems more accurate.

“Are you telling me this because I’m about to be a genin?”

Sakura sighs, and pulls him over to sit on a bench next to the distance marker. Since Riku can’t read it, he doesn’t know what it’s for, but based on just what he can see, they’re _maybe_ a quarter of the way up. There’s no one else on the stairs in either direction.

“You know how I said I had to check on some things?” Riku nods, but she doesn’t go on for a long few minutes, just staring at him and biting her lip, clenching her fists. Making a decision, it looks like. “Um. Okay. I don’t want—I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Or, um, offend you. So I’m going to ask a question, and if it’s really bad, just—just tell me to mind my own business, and I won’t ask again, okay?”

This sounds _horrifically awful_. There is no way this will end well. “Alright, shoot.”

Still, she hesitates, but not for long. “Okay. Okay. How much is Kakashi supporting you?”

“Like, with munny?” She nods. Riku thinks it over. Adds up how much munny Kakashi has given him, the three times Kakashi gave him munny. He tells her the total, then adds the things Kakashi’s bought for him: the mattress, the weapons, the clothes, the food (though he doesn’t include the magically-appearing food that he strongly suspects Naruto bought).

Sakura looks…troubled. “Alright. Thank you for telling me.” A pause, a beat. “Are—we’re okay, right?”

“Yeah, we’re good.” The question wasn’t nearly as bad as Riku thought it’d be. Awkward, maybe, but not even really embarrassing. It’s not like he’s been going on spending sprees with his uncle’s munny or anything, after all.

“Good.” Smiling, she stands up, and glances at the sun. “Want to learn a really easy jutsu?”

Since Riku knows a grand total of three, he nearly replies with a sarcastic, “No, I’m good, I know plenty of jutsus.” Sakura still looks a little hesitant, though, like she doesn’t quite believe that they’re fine. “It won’t be a problem, learning it right before my test?” Both because of the fact that he’s not yet a genin, and because his chakra reserves are still pretty pathetic.

Her smile brightens. “Not at all! Academy students learn it, it’s just not on the test. It’s called the ‘body flicker technique,’ and the hand seal is just the tiger. It doesn’t take much chakra, but make sure you spread your chakra throughout your body, not just to your hands or your legs. The body flicker technique will speed you up by energizing your muscles; if you don’t do it evenly, you can give yourself cramps or muscle spasms, plus vertigo when you stop.”

This also sounds horrific. “Okay, why would I want to use this thing?” Besides the fact that it’s a _single-seal jutsu_. Riku still hasn’t forgotten Naruto’s version of the illusion jutsu, and part of that’s probably because it’s _so easy_ to remember the seal.

“It’s almost like teleporting.”

_Sold_.

Sakura gives him some further advice: always spot, or find a destination point, before starting the seals, and keep an eye out for moving objects, people, and other obstacles that might not stay still. The further the distance, the more chakra the jutsu uses, so going all the way to the Academy will exhaust Riku, but getting halfway there ought to leave them enough time to be early and give Riku a chance to catch his breath _and_ regain some chakra.

Then they set off.

It feels like running, _only better_. Riku makes sure not to go too far, and stops when Sakura says to stop, but _Leviathan_ , that is going to be useful. Between this and the clone jutsu, Riku feels like this Konoha vacation has really paid off.

In front of the Academy, Sakura hesitates again. “I can go in with you, if you want. Iruka said that’s allowed—I won’t be able to help you,” she warns, “but if you want me there…”

Riku isn’t a very handsy person, as a rule. He doesn’t mind punching Sora’s shoulder, or smacking him on the back of the head, and he never goes out of his way to avoid touching Kairi, though he’s always a little more careful with her. Not because she’s a girl, really, more because she’s—well, the mayor’s daughter, and seems a little more breakable than Sora. 

But Sora and Kairi are Sora and Kairi.

For weeks, Sakura’s been coming to his apartment, eating his cooking, teaching him history and geography, telling him what’s rude and what isn’t, showing him how to make _tea_ of all things. Her sandals have their own space in front of the door, at least in Riku’s mind, because she always puts them in the same place and she’s there every day.

He _told her_ that he can’t read or write her language, and she didn’t make him feel stupid. She introduced him to Ino, and that led to Riku meeting Chouji and Shikamaru. They walked around the village a few times, bought food and ate together; they talked a lot.

Sakura isn’t his best friend or anything, but she is _a_ friend. She didn’t have to do most of those things, but she had anyway.

When he asked her why she was a ninja, she didn’t blow him off. She nearly cried, and it was awful and he doesn’t like thinking about how he obviously made her think of bad memories, but she answered anyway.

He can see why Ino would be friends with Sakura; Sakura’s _nice_. It’s too bad he can’t introduce her to Kairi, because he has the feeling they would get along—in fact, he can’t think of any of his friends from the Islands who _wouldn’t_ instantly like Sakura.

“I,” he says, smiling, “would _love_ you to be there.”

She smiles back.

Around them, the Academy is deserted, but the sun’s only barely starting to set. Classes have probably been over for a while, Riku guesses, if they let out at the same time here as on the Islands.

There was no discussion, earlier, over _where_ the test would be, but Riku figures Mr. Iruka would have mentioned it if he’s supposed to go anywhere except the classroom, so he heads in that direction with Sakura right behind him.

There are four others in Iruka’s classroom: Mr. Gai and Lee he recognizes, but he doesn’t know the second boy, this one dressed in muted tones, with hair longer than even Rinoa’s, nor does he know the girl, with a pink shirt and hair done up in two buns on either side of her head. All five people look up when the door slides open, Mr. Iruka behind his desk and the other four in front of it.

After a second look, Riku notices the white, pupil-less eyes on the boy with long hair, like the little girl in Mr. Iruka’s class who showed him the backflip. Maybe they’re related?

“Ah, Riku, right on time,” Mr. Iruka says. “Maito Gai and his team have agreed to help with your exam. Gai, Rock Lee, I believe you already know Riku. Hyuuga Neji,” he nods to the other boy, “Tenten,” and the girl, “this is Hatake Riku. And Haruno Sakura, who has been tutoring him.”

“We’ve met,” Sakura says, bowing a bit to the team.

“Sakura!” Lee cries. Literally: tears stream down his face. “We meet again!”

Riku is nearly positive that _Sakura_ didn’t skip out on training today—or, if she did, at least stopped by to let Mr. Gai know about the test—which means Lee probably saw her no more than an hour ago.

Before he can say much more, Tenten sighs and grabs him by his collar. “We’re here for _Hatake_ , Lee. Get ahold of yourself.”

Neji inclines his head, which isn’t really a _bow_ like Kurenai demonstrated, way back on his first day in Konoha; Gai, on the other hand, walks over and lays one gentle hand on Riku’s shoulder.

“Riku,” he says, with all the gravity of a graduation ceremony, “you are ready for this test. I have the utmost faith in you and your abilities. Confront it with all your might, and you will emerge victorious.”

Mr. Iruka beams. “Well said, Mr. Gai! If you’re ready, Riku, we can get started.”

“Ready.” It’s not totally a lie; Mr. Gai’s sincere belief in him is both encouraging and nerve-wracking, and that throws Riku off, but he can recover.

“All right.” Mr. Iruka pulls out a packet that could, easily, be passed to the students in Riku’s classes back home; it looks like a standard test, with multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks, and probably some essay questions, too. “Now, I’ll read you the question and you’ll tell me your answer. The rest of you need to leave, except Mr. Gai; this part is going to be boring, I’m afraid, and you can’t help him.” He grins, first at Sakura, then at Gai’s team. “I realize you recently participated in the Chuunin Exams, but what Ibiki tested for is _not_ what I am testing for.”

Mr. Gai laughs, and the sentiment seems to be shared: the others all smile or smirk. Riku shrugs off what feels like an inside joke and leans against the front row desk.

Sakura heads out first, shooting Riku a wry look and promising to be back as soon as Mr. Iruka lets her back in. Lee follows shortly after, Tenten on his heels, while Neji hesitates at the door.

“I’m sure Riku appreciates your support, Neji,” Mr. Gai says.

_That_ gets him out the door, with barely a huff and no backward glance.

Taking a test orally? _Awkward_. Riku has to think about the questions more than he ever has in the past, because he can’t go back and scan through his answers; if something occurs to him later, he has to tell Mr. Iruka that he’d like to change his answer, which is humiliating and makes him rethink whether he _really_ needs to make that change. All in all, the test proceeds at a _crawl_ , roughly the pace of school on the last day before summer break.

Mr. Gai keeps a smile on his face, and not a condescending one, either. Riku tries not to look, worried about accusations of cheating, but—there’s not much to catch his eye, while he’s thinking over the questions, trying to remember not just the main answer, but all of the details that might be the difference between passing and failing.

The multiple-choice and true-false questions are less stressful on the surface, but then he reconsiders all of _them_ every time Mr. Iruka throws another short-answer question his way, because what if he’s misremembering? What if he’s already gotten too many of them wrong?

Some things are easy, like the types of chakra affinities (though Riku almost misses it because Lightning is in no way a “proper” element where _he’s_ from, regardless of what these ninjas think—Ixion is a demigod _at best_ , and barely rates a shrine on even the most populated islands), and the names of the Hidden Villages. Other things, he _knows_ he gets wrong; Mr. Iruka asks him when the treaty with Cloud Country was signed, and Riku’s brain dissolves into static. He _might_ say a number, or he might just make a high-pitched squeak, but either way, Mr. Iruka lets him move on to the next question without his facial expression betraying _anything_.

Then Mr. Iruka gives him some scenarios, asks him to come up with a solution. This is no “if Boat A leaves the harbor at dawn and Ship B leaves the harbor at noon, how long will it take B to catch up to A, assuming standard velocity for boats and ships?” This is “if your mission is to do X thing, and enemy ninjas A, B, and C from Hidden Rock try to kill you in the middle of your mission, what do you do?”

Riku actually asks for scratch paper at the point where Mr. Iruka starts describing _positioning_. After the concerted effort of several days from Sakura, Ino, and a reluctantly-roped-in Shikamaru, Riku’s doodles look less like chicken scratch and more like an actual diagram of a situation. There are _four_ of those questions, and Mr. Iruka doesn’t just take Riku’s oral answers, he _also_ asks for Riku’s paper.

Finally, Mr. Iruka says, “That’s enough. You passed the written.” There are still pages left. Riku wonders if Mr. Iruka’s been calculating points; if, after dire warnings that he may need to get _extra_ points on the written test to make up for his terrible aim, he’s going to wind up altogether failing because Mr. Iruka is trying to take it easy on him right now.

Leviathan, he hopes not.

“Congratulations, Riku!” Mr. Gai offers, and when Riku thanks him, Mr. Gai gives him an approximately thousand-watt smile. Riku has grown up with _Sora_ for most of his life, and before this moment, he did not know that smiles could _get_ that shiny-bright.

When Mr. Iruka lets the others back in, they offer their congratulations as well, some more…encouragingly than others. 

“There are still three more parts,” Neji says.

“I’m going to pass those, too,” Riku tells him. He in no way feels as confident as he hopes he sounds, saying this.

Neji seems to consider him. “Is it true you’ve been living with Uzumaki Naruto?”

Riku makes a face at the non-sequitur. “Uh, yeah? He’s been out training, but it’s his apartment.”

“Do you agree with his beliefs?”

“Which ones?” Honestly, it’s not like he and Naruto have had a long, sit-down conversation or anything; what even is Neji _expecting_ from this?

“That anyone may change their fate.”

Well. That’s an easy one. “Yeah, of course. I mean, you have to _try_.”

“Yes!” Mr. Gai cries. “With such an attitude, you are sure to succeed! If not at first, then through hard work and perseverance, you will prevail!”

“Right.” It didn’t occur to him before, but now Riku realizes: Mr. Gai and Sora must _never meet_. _Ever_. Even Kairi might be a little too cheery and enthusiastic; she does not need an over-the-top role model for that. (Actually, on second thought, _Selphie and Tidus_ are also risky, so maybe it’s just best to make sure Mr. Gai never comes to the Destiny Islands. Less danger all around, that way.)

Iruka coughs—not a normal cough, or a throat-clearing cough, but a trying-to-hide-laughter cough. Riku glares at him.

“If we can move on…” Iruka says, pausing for everyone to agree before he continues. “Great. Let’s move outside for the practical.”

Outside are posts, much like the ones Riku has been training with, although these have targets.

“Now, Riku, I want you to try to hit those targets. The closer to middle you hit, the more points. You’ll have five minutes once you start. Do you understand?”

Barely resisting rolling his eyes, Riku nods and pulls out a knife. Sakura can pull out a handful and hit each and every target, but he has enough problems with just one.

“Begin!”

Riku tries to hit the targets; not so much the _centers_ , but just anywhere inside those circles on the wood. When they hit wood, the knives quiver, just a bit. Their handles are cool, but not slippery thanks to the grips. He doesn’t drop any, though he does preemptively wipe his hand on his pants. Nervous sweat. Slipping and dropping a knife might cost him points, or just time and opportunities, but he doesn’t want to find out which.

The sunset is in the corner of his eye, now. He ignores it. Tenten smells like hot metal and oil; Neji, like grass; Lee, like soap, with just the faintest tinge of sweat that probably no one but Riku and Kakashi could pick up on. He ignores all that, too.

Mr. Gai smells like all the good things: grass, and charcoal, and firepit-smoke, and cooking fish. Riku’s not sure how he manages that, but he always does. When it’s not cooking fish, it’s something else hearty and filling.

He focuses on Sakura, because she’s familiar: books, parchment, ink, a hint of perfume but no stronger, not since he let her know just how sensitive his nose is. Her perfume of choice is cherry blossoms, which is what she’s named after; the petals are almost the same shade as her hair. Riku has now-fond memories of throwing knives, her hands pulling his body this way and that. Steady your footing, Riku; straighten your back, Riku; hold your hand like this, Riku, or else you’ll send your knife straight into your own foot. All of it, with that books-smell and a hint of perfume.

(Mr. Gai never took over the knife-throwing lessons, and it slipped Riku’s mind to ask him. It only occurs to him, now, as these memories steady him, that originally Mr. Gai was going to be the one teaching him those things. While Mr. Gai is undoubtedly more experienced, Riku’s grateful that it was Sakura who wound up teaching him.)

His back straightens, his stance shifts. He hits the center a grand total of once, and he’s remembering Sakura’s lessons when he does it.

Mr. Iruka calls, “Stop!” and Riku surveys his handiwork.

One in the center circle. Some—more than Riku would like—outside the targets completely; only two are on the ground, though. He’s gotten easily ten in the target, which is an accomplishment, considering he started at _zero_ in the target just a couple weeks ago. He’s only been practicing most every night since then to get to this point, but it still feels a bit miraculous, to think of how little time it took him to get even this far.

Several moments of silence follow as Mr. Iruka writes something on a notepad. Riku’s score, probably. Probably _not_ a rude doodle of a hapless stick-Riku failing his test, despite what Riku’s anxieties are starting to churn up in the back of his mind.

“Great,” Mr. Iruka says absently, glancing up at Riku. “Now for the next part. This exercise will stand in place of your Academy grade, Riku, so take it seriously.”

Riku nods—of course he will; when _hasn’t_ he taken any part of this seriously so far—but Mr. Iruka doesn’t seem to expect a response at all, as he immediately goes on.

“Each of Gai’s team is particularly skilled at one kind of combat. Tenten, for example, excels with weaponry.” Riku glances at her; that explains the smell, at least, though he’s not about to say that to her. “Lee is likewise excellent at taijutsu.” No surprise, since he’s been drilling Sakura on that since day one.

“Is Neji good at ninjutsu or genjutsu, then?” he asks, when Mr. Iruka doesn’t volunteer Neji’s specialty. It seems like the obvious answer; maybe _too_ obvious for a ninja, actually.

Neji snorts. Okay then. Too obvious it is.

“Ah, Neji is skilled at a different type of taijutsu than Lee. He can also see through genjutsu. Speaking of which,” Mr. Iruka turns to Neji, “have you located a seal?”

“No. There isn’t one.” Neji’s eyes are wide, the veins around them distended; Riku stares, startled and more than a little horrified. It looks _painful_ , whatever Neji is doing. “His chakra coils are oddly developed, but that does not explain the anomaly.”

“Huh. Well, there goes that theory…” Mr. Iruka shakes his head. “Thank you for your help, Neji. If you want, you can leave.”

Neji nods and, after a brief hesitation, disappears in a gust of wind and leaves. It would have been more impressive this morning, before Sakura taught Riku how to do that himself.

“Riku.” Riku glances at Iruka questioningly. “Your second-to-last test will be against Tenten and Lee. I don’t expect you to win, of course, but try your best.”

His nervousness rushes to the forefront of his mind; he can clearly remember how easily Naruto beat him. Mr. Iruka’s “I don’t expect you to win” doesn’t help any. It only occurs to him as he enters the ring that two of Mr. Gai’s students lost in the preliminaries, but _one didn’t_. That one, from what he’s gathered, is Tenten, which is part of why he hasn’t seen her at all, even though he’s been training with her jounin-instructor every day.

Sure enough, he doesn’t win; he fights Tenten first, and even though she says at the start that she’s limiting herself to a knife, same as him, she _still_ beats him easily. 

Riku uses his longer knife, the gift from his grandfather, while Tenten pulls out the smaller Konoha-standard kind. At first, they circle each other, Tenten with a half-smile like she’s humoring him, Riku with the sinking feeling that he’s only putting off the inevitable. 

He charges, getting it over with. She blocks with her knife, and he pushes into the block, throwing his weight against the deadlock. She’s got at least an inch on him, though, and probably ten to fifteen pounds of muscle. She matches him, and he gets the impression that she could put him on his ass then and there, if she wanted to.

So Riku eases off, moving to the side as Tenten falls forward. She doesn’t fall like Sora did, though; she turns with him, knife striking up towards his face.

Jerking back, he escapes with a thin, shallow scratch along his cheek. Her knife-arm is up, and he stabs at her unprotected side. She dodges and skips away, guard once again in place.

They circle again. Tenten darts forward this time. Riku scrambles to avoid the first blow, aimed at his chest. Even if she pulls it—and he’s sure Mr. Iruka wouldn’t let her _kill_ him—that would _hurt_.

On the offensive now, she doesn’t just let him dodge. She follows him, knife always there, and he stumbles back, parries what strikes he can, even ducks a few. The only hit he scores is when he deliberately takes one to his side—another shallow scratch, although it tears through his shirt. He hurriedly traps Tenten’s wrist between his side and his arm, at the same time leveling his knife at her throat.

For that, he earns a grin before she sweeps his legs out from under him, knocks his knife across the circle, and sits on his chest, her own knife at _his_ throat now.

Mr. Iruka calls the match and Tenten stands up, offering Riku a hand. Once he’s up, he gingerly touches his side to gauge the scratch. Shallow but bleeding, and his shirt is sticking to the underside of his ribs with darkening blood.

“Here, let me take a look at that,” Mr. Iruka says, pulling the shirt up and swiping the scratch with a damp, soft cloth. It stings, but not too much. He also dabs at the cut on Riku’s cheek. (While Mr. Iruka is fussing, Tenten recovers Riku’s knife and, with the circle between them, gestures vaguely with it. Riku, watching this over Mr. Iruka’s shoulder, assumes that means she’ll hold onto it for him.) “I don’t think either of these needs a bandage. Be sure to keep them clean, though.”

Riku nods, and Mr. Iruka steps back, waving Lee forward.

“It is my honor to test Mr. Gai’s student, and Sakura’s as well!” Lee says cheerfully, grinning, and then looks past Riku and winks. When Riku glances over his shoulder, he sees Sakura, hiding her face in her hands. If Lee’s upset by this, he gives no sign. “She has spoken very highly of you. Let us see if you deserve the honor of calling yourself their student!”

This match is hand-to-hand, no weapons, no ninjutsu, no genjutsu—which isn’t quite so bad, if only because Riku has never claimed to be any good at hand-to-hand. Honestly, having Naruto kick his ass first also helped. Less ego to bruise, now.

Keeping Mr. Gai’s promise about _if you can only throw one punch, it will be a very good punch_ , he makes it his mission to show off the things Mr. Gai has had time to teach him, or to have him practice: his falls, his stance, his blocks, and the straight punch.

Lee begins doing fancy things like leg sweeps and hooks and using his elbows and knees, some moves that Riku has seen before, from Sakura or Sora or even Tidus and Wakka, some moves that Riku uses himself, and some moves that Riku hasn’t seen but could copy easily enough, after getting hit with them a time or four.

Lee’s nice: he doesn’t hit any of the obvious vulnerable spots, like Riku’s eyes or his wounded side; he doesn’t repeatedly attack a specific arm or leg; he even uses the same moves multiple times, from multiple angles and attack directions, giving Riku the opportunity to learn them for himself.

Of course, Lee doesn’t _need_ to go for Riku’s injured side, or to create openings. He could beat Riku perfectly well without breaking a sweat. The old boast—blindfolded and with a hand tied behind his back—springs to mind.

At least it isn’t Sasuke. At least Kakashi is out of town.

Riku blocks when he can, dodges when he can, and doesn’t get a single chance to attack. When Lee isn’t kicking at Riku’s chest, he’s sweeping his legs out from under him, or driving an elbow into his stomach. Riku’s sure that, given a more open area, Lee could wipe the floor with him even more spectacularly; since they only have about ten square feet, though, Riku is spared that.

He has a _lot_ of opportunities to show everyone how good he is at falling. And, when he gets back on his feet, how good he is at standing. Lee still knocks him down, but after Mr. Gai’s training, Riku can make Lee have to _try_.

The high point of the fight, as far as Riku’s own performance is concerned, is when he attempts a particular dodge-and-leg-sweep that Lee turns out effortlessly, and manages to nearly twist his own ankle. Lee actually _catches_ him, then proceeds to demonstrate the motion for Riku a couple of times (by using it on him, but hey, just because Riku’s not as much of a hands-on learner as Sora doesn’t mean he _can’t_ learn from getting his face shoved toward the ground).

What Riku really accomplishes, though, is “not winding up on the floor” again. When Lee tries to pin him, Riku wriggles out of it; he can’t put up much of a fight, but he can emulate an eel. He doesn’t let Lee keep ahold of him, either. He figures a hold or a pin is a clear end of the match, and if he can’t get a hit in, the best he can do is prolong the fight as long as possible.

Sure enough, Mr. Iruka calls the match after Riku gets out of Lee’s hold for the third time. As soon as he does, Lee is in Riku’s space, thanking him for the fight and then asking how Riku got away.

Trying to explain an eel to a landsman is unexpectedly difficult, and becomes even worse when Mr. Gai, Tenten, and Sakura try to help.

Tenten claims to have seen one, which surprises Riku, but she at least doesn’t get any facts wrong. Sakura has apparently read about eels in a book, which doesn’t surprise him, though she’s under the impression that they’re shark-sized. Mr. Gai says nothing about his expertise vis-a-vis eels, but seems to think that they can produce lightning bolts. 

Since he’s a jounin, Riku doesn’t actually _call_ him a liar. “Maybe eels around here are different,” is what he says instead, and then he lets Mr. Gai tell Lee all sorts of (probably made-up) stories about Mist Village eels.

They continue to talk while Mr. Iruka tests Riku’s clone jutsu. Riku manages three clones (if Sakura hadn’t taught him that new jutsu, he thinks he could’ve gotten four or even five, a _record_ for him), Mr. Iruka says that’s sufficient, and there’s a pretense of adding scores before Mr. Iruka declares that he’s officially a genin, with a shiny new forehead-protector.

Riku ties it on himself, knotting the cloth at the base of his skull. It feels weird, having something pressed against his forehead. Everyone’s smiling at him; Lee even offers him a thumbs-up, which Riku returns with a grin.

For once, he feels a bit like he _belongs_ , not just to his friends—that isn’t a new feeling—but to a _place_. It isn’t bad; it doesn’t remind him of the ocean boxing him in, doesn’t even remind him of the city walls trapping him here, and he smiles back and lets himself belong to Konoha, just for right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3
> 
> Incidentally, we are now getting close to the end of the parts I wrote way way back, so here's a heads-up. I'm also trying to start pacing the chapters better, so expect some fluctuation in the chapter sizes.
> 
> Also, likely this summer, I'm going to do some edits for character voice, pacing, etc. I'll definitely leave a note if anything drastic gets changed, though!


	8. A Conversation, and a Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After passing the genin exam, Riku's all set to leave. He's done everything he set out to do in Konoha, so there's no reason to stick around...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! It's been a while! But the story isn't dead, and neither am I (though summer school felt like it _would_ do me in for a bit there).
> 
> As a head's up, you might wanna check out chapter 2 of _the best people I know looking out for me_ before this chapter, as it will give some context for a) where Iruka's head was at in chapter 7, and b) where Sarutobi's coming from in this one.

Iruka doesn’t let Riku go back to the apartment by himself that evening. Instead, they have ramen at Naruto’s favorite place, and then Iruka takes Riku to his own apartment and gives him a futon to sleep on in the living room. Meanwhile, Riku asks him questions about everything he can think of, and if Iruka has the answer, he tells Riku.

He can’t tell Riku why people don’t like Naruto; he’s very brief when he explains why Sasuke lives in the ghost-town part of the village. Comparatively, he says a lot more about Riku’s apparently famous grandfather, and even tells some stories about Kakashi, although his face goes a bit sour through those.

Once storytime is over, Iruka pulls out a vest like the one he, Kakashi, and Mr. Gai all wear, along with a long-sleeved shirt. Riku tries them on; the shirt is just about perfect, while the vest is a little loose, so Iruka shows him how to adjust it. 

Also, apparently, the munny around here is called yen, and there’s some ridiculous system of coins and bits of paper; Riku knows a bit about that, since he’s bought food and haggled as well as he was able. There’s also apparently “ryō,” which anyone can exchange at a bank, and which is good across all the Elemental Countries (apparently, besides ryō, every Elemental Country has their own type of munny/yen). It’s not typically carried in large quantities, though, unless the carrier has a bodyguard contingent, or a ninja team on a C-rank protection mission, since ryō a) weighs a lot, and b) is good everywhere, making it spectacularly valuable and therefore spectacularly at risk of theft.

After all Riku’s questions are answered, Iruka leaves him alone and goes to bed. Riku decides that he’ll leave tomorrow—he can stock Naruto up on food, as thanks for letting him stay in the apartment for a month. The last part of the chuunin exams starts in a couple days, so Naruto and Kakashi will be back soon. If Riku wants to leave, it will _have_ to be soon.

He’s actually awake for half the night, tossing and turning, mulling over whether he really _wants_ to go. On the one hand: winding up like Chouji is a _terrifying_ prospect, and given how casually everyone treated it, that could very well be in his future. On the other hand: does he really want to be the kind of guy who skips town while people are otherwise occupied? It’s…a little close to home, for Riku, given his father. His mom would probably not approve.

But she _would_ approve of him doing whatever it takes to keep himself in one piece; so would his friends. He _promised Kairi_. If that means abandoning all his new friends, and this village, and the commitment he had kinda-sorta made when Kakashi took him from the Islands in the first place, well, isn’t that still worth it?

In his mind, he pictures a set of scales, and on one side are the Islands—

Sora’s smile and Kairi’s laugh; his mother’s hand on his cheek; Selphie’s exuberance and Tidus’s excitement and Wakka’s humor; the sunset lighting the horizon on fire; the smell of the flowers and a storm on the wind; the cool quiet of the Secret Place; cold water on a hot summer day; fish for dinner; coconut milk; the paopu tree and a hundred days and nights on the play island—

a two-bedroom house for a two-person family; the whispers that follow his mother in the market; an impassable ocean between him and any place he could feel that he belongs; the insults he can see in his teachers’ eyes; hesitance and fear on the faces of his friends; Sora’s blood on his hands and Sora’s scream in his ears—

and on the other side is Konoha—

a boy in a hospital bed; orphans and orphans and _orphans_ everywhere he turns around; a kid younger than him left alone in an apartment; a kid younger than him left in a city district with nothing but ghosts; a girl afraid of failing to stop her friends from getting killed; early-morning wake-ups; a million written words that Riku can’t understand; on his back in the dirt yet again; calluses on his fingers from the knives he’s only barely competent with; exhaustion from repeating the same exercises over and over and _over_ ; quickly-hidden judgement when the people around him realize he’s closer in understanding to the six-year-olds than the kids his age—

Sakura’s smile and Naruto’s laugh; Mr. Gai’s hand on his shoulder; Iruka’s encouragement and Kakashi’s furtive help; the sound of the wind in the leaves; barbeque beef and friendly conversation; a hundred thousand reassurances that he is more than capable of meeting Mr. Gai’s expectations; the faint impression of Sakura’s perfume on all the scrolls she leaves behind for him to study; the weight of the knives in the pouch on his thigh and Naruto’s trust and Sakura’s regard; that sense of _belonging_ —

Yeah, Riku doesn’t get a good night’s sleep that night.

///

The next day, he gets up and has breakfast with Iruka. Iruka leaves earlier than Riku expects, but apparently, he’s behind on his grading and needs to go in early to catch up. They part at the first market on the way to the Academy, as Riku stops to shop for a few groceries before heading back to Naruto’s apartment. 

After putting the groceries away, Riku packs his things. He can only take the backpack. Anything bigger will be suspicious, will slow him down. He works mechanically, stopping only to yawn or rub his eyes. 

All his keepsakes and pictures go into the backpack. The clothes he doesn’t want to leave behind, he rolls into colorful noodles of cloth to fit as many of them as he can. Besides that, what he has on—a double layer of shirts, not only to save on space but also because Konoha is _not_ a tropical island, pants, shoes (not the sandals, since those pack up more easily than his sneakers), necklace, filled weapons pouch—is all he can take with him. That leaves an awful lot of the clothes.

The yen he has left, he leaves for Naruto; he won’t need it on the Islands, and there’s nowhere to stop between Konoha and the temple. (At least, nowhere on the route Kakashi chose, the only one Riku knows.)

He leaves behind all the scrolls, even the homework-type ones from when Sakura tutored him. They take up too much space, and anyway, they might help if Shikamaru needs more writing to figure out how to translate. Sakura will probably think to check for them here.

The metal stars and knives, he keeps; again, he might need them. Besides, Kakashi left them for _him_. They aren’t loaners. Those go in the pouch on his thigh, so they don’t even cost him backpack-space.

The forehead-protector…

On the one hand, he’s leaving. He isn’t going to be a genin of Konoha, a ninja of Konoha; he has no reason, no _right_ to keep it. On the other hand, he trained and studied and he’s _still_ sore from earning the forehead-protector. It’s _his_ , a symbol to prove to himself that now, he can control his chakra. He’s a _ninja_ , and he won’t ever hurt someone accidentally again.

He wonders if his father left his forehead-protector behind. Riku can’t imagine Kakashi keeping it, if he had; he can’t imagine anyone wanting to keep Riku’s, either.

That’s what decides the issue. No one here will keep it; it’ll only get in the way, or be tossed out. Riku, at least, will hold onto it as a reminder of his time here. 

Deciding that leaves Riku basically nothing much else to do. He eats lunch, tidies up after himself, neatens the fridge, and figures that it’s time to leave just past two.

Early enough in the afternoon that there are still people around, late enough that almost everyone’s busy with their own thing and won’t be paying attention to him. Iruka won’t be expecting him, since there’s still another hour or so left of class, and they never meet in the afternoon. Sakura let him know yesterday, after congratulating him, that she and Ino are spending the day together for girls-only training, so there shouldn’t be a problem there. Mr. Gai also told him to have a day to celebrate, although he also cautioned Riku to work out on his own or he’ll regret it tomorrow.

(Riku did his morning exercises while Iruka made breakfast. How long will he be able to keep them up, without anyone to look disappointed when he tries to give up, without anyone encouraging him when he goes for another set despite his tiredness?)

Naruto’s still busy with his own training, and there’s the one regret that Riku can’t quite quash: he really wishes he could leave Naruto a note, let him know that Riku is leaving and it wasn’t anything Naruto did. Even if he could risk that (and he’s pretty sure a note like that could get him caught), any note he would leave, Naruto wouldn’t be able to read. He’d need Shikamaru to translate, which defeats the purpose.

So, with that thought weighing him down, Riku swings his backpack onto his back, makes sure to lock the door behind him, and slips the key underneath.

He walks down the flights of stairs perfectly calmly. He doesn’t glance around to see if anyone’s watching. He doesn’t wince when he steps wrong and his footfalls turn too loud on the old, squeaky steps. He’s normal, everything’s totally normal. His story is that he’s going to see Kakashi and Sasuke, who are training outside the village. He’s not really good at the fast-running jutsu, hence the backpack; he expects to take half a day or so to get there.

(Maybe he could actually go to see them? But no, Kakashi would probably _sense_ that something’s wrong; besides, Sasuke isn’t Naruto, and he and Riku aren’t close. If it was _Naruto_ training with his uncle, well, Riku might just risk getting caught, just so he could see the kid one last time. Naruto’s life is crappy enough without Riku pulling this crap on him—and if Kairi _had_ come along, she would cuff him for even _thinking_ about abandoning his orphaned roommate.)

The gate is really the only way in or out of the village, and the guards there will almost certainly stop him. He thinks he can pull off Neji’s blank face and slightly superior tone. Besides, people have commented on how he looks like he’s related to Kakashi since he came to Konoha, and there isn’t anything suspicious about a nephew visiting his uncle.

(Never mind that Kakashi and Riku aren’t that close; never mind that Riku’s father walked away from Konoha and all his commitments, _including_ to Kakashi. Riku thinks: _maybe that’s genetic_ , and then he scowls at himself and tries to unthink the thought.)

What people he sees on the streets seem fairly busy; mostly, they either seem to be going from one place to another, or they have something they’re in the middle of. Riku avoids the markets by going on the tree-bridges above them. 

There are even a handful of kids his age, mostly with forehead-protectors. Some are cleaning or repairing buildings, others are obviously running errands, and still others are in the training-grounds peppered along Riku’s route to the gate. The people who notice him and make eye contact give him a nod and a friendly smile, but don’t stare or look twice. He nods back and keeps his eyes forward, back straight, chin up.

He has nothing to hide. He’s doing nothing wrong. If he acts like that hard enough, everyone around him will believe it.

( _Swear loyalty to the village. Promise to serve Konoha, her citizens, and her interests, to the best of your abilities. That includes, of course, being physically present in order to serve._ And Riku had reservations, but he agreed anyway, and what does that make him? 

Even in Destiny Islands, the stories aren’t kind to traitors and oath-breakers.)

On ground level and just in front of an empty training ground, Riku sees the _Hokage_ sitting on a stone bench, gazing serenely at the cliff with his face carved into it. Riku falters, stopping several feet away, and the Hokage turns his head to look at him.

“Ah, Hatake Riku,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry; he sounds fond, and knowing. As if he’s aware of what Riku is up to, but he’s not pissed off about it. “Come here, have a seat, my boy,” and he pats the bench next to him. “I heard you passed your exam yesterday. Congratulations.”

Riku hesitantly walks over and sits down. “Thanks.” After a pause, he swings his backpack off his back and rests it on the ground, like he’s back at his desk in his classroom back home.

(Can he really go back there, sit in that desk for hours every day, when he knows about all of _this_?)

“Gai, especially, had many things to say about you. You have come a long way in a very short time. It’s certainly impressive.”

Riku just shrugs. “I had really good teachers. Iruka, Mr. Gai, and Sakura spent a lot of time helping me, and even Naruto tried to teach me some things, before he had to go train.” He frowns. “Anyway, I lost in all the fights. With Naruto, too. Wouldn’t it be more impressive if I won?”

He’s lost every fight he’s been in with these ninjas. Chouji only lost the one fight, and look where _he_ wound up.

The Hokage chuckles. “Terribly so, but not very reasonable, after only a month. Lee and Tenten, and Neji as well, are exceptional young people. They are all very dedicated to their training, which has been far longer than your own, I dare say. As for Naruto, when did you fight him? Early into your stay here?” Riku nods. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Naruto is another young person who has come a long way in a short time. If you had come, hm, at the beginning of the year, that fight might have gone very differently.”

“The beginning of the year?” Seven, almost eight months now, going by Konoha’s calendar; four, almost five, on the Islands. The beginning of the year was a long time ago either way, and Riku was a different kid then, too. He was _twelve_ , he hadn’t broken Sora’s arm, and he was still in school; he had just dealt with a week and a half of Sora pouting at him because he said Santa Claus didn’t exist, _again_.

It wasn’t his fault he was almost thirteen and too old for little-kid stories like Santa Claus, but Sora blubbered and made the worst faces, until Riku almost took it back. Then he tattled to Kairi about it, and she just shrugged and said she’d never met Santa Claus so she couldn’t say whether he was real or not. She does that—humors Sora, even when she knows better.

Friends lie to each other to protect their feelings. Riku should’ve lied about Santa Claus. If he knew that, a few months later, he was going to break Sora’s arm in a wet _snap_ and the overwhelming smell of blood… That, a month after breaking Sora’s arm, he was going to leave for a place that encouraged kids their age to send each other to the hospital… 

(That, a few months later, he was going to run away from all of this, just because he’s _scared_ …) 

Yeah, he would’ve lied about Santa Claus. (He’s never coming off the Naughty List anyway, so who cares about a little white lie? It’s _nothing_ compared to the lies he’s told Kakashi, Iruka, Mr. Gai, Sakura, and Naruto.)

The Hokage laughs. “Ah, youth. I’m sure that it seems like a very long time ago to you.”

“I was a different person then.” (A better person, in practically every way. He can’t meet the Hokage’s eyes, feels exposed and vulnerable just verbalizing the thought, like the Hokage will see every one of his weaknesses written on his face. Maybe there are neat little symbols for each of them in the ninja language.)

Again, the Hokage laughs. “Ha! Now _that_ is a good one.” He reaches up and brushes Riku’s hair off the metal plate of the forehead-protector. Riku still doesn’t look up. “You’re growing up, not becoming a different person. Now, when you’re _my_ age, you can say things like that and get away with it.”

At that, Riku lifts his head to look at the oldest person he’s seen in this village, torn between two questions. Deciding that it’s probably rude to ask how old he is, Riku goes with, “Did you ever feel the same way? Like something changed, and you’re a different person because of it?” (Like you were about to make a mistake, but you’re not _absolutely_ sure that doing something else won’t just be a _bigger_ mistake?)

“Many times.” He reaches into his robes, pulls out a pipe and then a match, and casts a sidelong look at Riku. “Permit an old man his faults? I find it helps me remember.”

Smoking isn’t really much of a thing on the island he’s from—Kairi’s mother has some pretty strict rules about what adults can and can’t do around kids, and the island just isn’t big enough to avoid _all_ the kids—but there are always trade ships, and Riku’s been to bigger islands where it’s more of an issue a few times. No one’s ever looked at _him_ for permission before, though, and definitely not anyone as old or as in-charge as the Hokage, so he says, “Sure, go ahead,” and tries not to breathe too deeply as the pipe is lit.

The smell isn’t _too_ bad; a little fragrant, actually, like whatever the Hokage has in that pipe is meant to be smelled and maybe even enjoyed, not just tolerated. Riku doesn’t care for it—too strong, for one thing, and it stings his nose—but he can put up with it for however long this conversation takes.

“Ahhhh. Let’s see. You asked whether I felt like a different person. In some ways, I have always been myself: as you will find, there are things you cannot change. The core of yourself will remain strong, regardless of what you face. What is important to you, you will keep.

“But many things change. Even those you think are your core can turn out to be merely…branches, let’s say, rather than the trunk.”

Metaphors. Great. Riku sucks at metaphors most of the time. They had to write some in class last year, and Riku’s pretty sure both Kairi _and_ his mother have a copy of his pitiful attempts just waiting for the ideal opportunity to blackmail and/or embarrass him.

Still, this one is pretty straightforward, and anyway, of _course_ the leader of a _forest city_ would use a metaphor about trees.

“What’s your trunk?” he asks before he can think better of it.

The Hokage doesn’t hesitate. “This village, and all her people. Especially the children, of course. The future of Konoha. Her ideals.”

That…seems like a lot of trunks. “What did you used to think it was?”

This time, the Hokage inhales deeply and blows out a perfect smoke-ring. Riku watches this with interest, thoroughly distracted; it takes nearly a minute for the smoke to dissipate into the air, and the smell lingers longer.

“That’s a very powerful question.” Riku’s eyes snap back to the Hokage, mouth open to apologize, but the Hokage just raises his free hand. “I don’t say that to chastise you. Nor do I say it because I will not answer. But when you get to be my age, you know which are the powerful questions and which aren’t; at your age, I had less experience with such matters.

“Ask powerful questions, young Hatake, when you wish to know a powerful answer; but you should know what you are asking for before you ask for it.”

They are probably not just talking about his question, now. Riku bites his lip, thinking hard, but he doesn’t know what to say to that; he doesn’t know what he’s _supposed_ to say.

The Hokage blows another ring of smoke before speaking again. “When I was younger, I thought the village’s safety and glory were the most important goals a ninja could have. To see one’s village stand, head and shoulders above the others, to _know_ that no other village could challenge Konoha… And I thought that my team, my partners and my teacher, were my trunk.” His eyes seem to twinkle when he looks at Riku. “I understand you have experienced your uncle’s bell test?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “My teacher inflicted that upon my team, as I inflicted it upon my own students, and they on theirs. You may one day put it to your own team. I hope to see that day.”

Riku tries, very hard, not to flinch. (This man would trust _him_ to be a teacher?) Instead of letting that line of thought continue, he turns the conversation back to an earlier, less dangerous point. “What happened to change your mind?”

“War.” Another smoke ring, and Riku’s sorry he asked, but not sorry he dodged talking about his own future in the village. “In war, you must make choices. Sometimes, in war and in life, there is no right choice, only the wrong choice you can live with and the wrong choice you can’t. I found that the wrong choices I could live with were all for the safety and preservation of Konoha and her ideals, while my teammates…had other callings.” The fourth smoke-ring is larger than the others, and when it fades, the Hokage sighs. “As I said, a powerful question. When I was your age, I was a different person, because that young man had yet to make any of those choices. And yet, I do not think he would disapprove of what I have done, on the whole.”

“That’s good.” At the Hokage’s raised eyebrow, Riku flushes and stammers. “I-I mean, even if you’re different, in some ways, if the old you would approve, that means you kept your core, your—your trunk, I guess, right? I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think it’d be good, to look back and realize that you let go of everything that was important to you.” (The wrong choice you can live with and the wrong choice you can’t. Riku isn’t sure which is which.)

“I agree.” The Hokage smiles, and when he blows out smoke this time, it’s just smoke, not a pretty ring. “Though I think it must be exceptionally difficult, to truly reject everything you once held dear. In my experience, there is generally one thing—an idea, a principle, a dream—that stays with you. Some carry it proudly, and others hide it away, but I have never met anyone without some vestige of this that they have had for quite some time.”

Riku fidgets in the silence that follows; the Hokage smokes his pipe, smile still on his face. He isn’t looking at his own face on the cliffside, Riku realizes after close to a minute and a half of silent observation; he’s looking at all of them, eyes moving slowly from one to the next, sliding past his own only to linger on the fourth head, growing more somber.

“Has Kakashi told you why he visits the memorial stone?” the Hokage says, and the words seem to leech the last of the humor and happiness out of him. He gazes at Riku, pipe held in his hand and wrinkles very pronounced around his eyes, his mouth.

Riku looks away, uncomfortable. “No.”

“His team died.”

He jerks in place, less at the words themselves and more at the casual, and yet sad, tone of the old man’s voice. “Oh.”

“His jounin teacher was the student of my student,” the Hokage goes on. “Namikaze Minato.” 

Riku _knows_ that name, knows who it belongs to, and opens his mouth to say so, but the Hokage forestalls him with a nod. 

“The Fourth Hokage was a good man and, yes, he taught Kakashi. Pedigree is something that we ninja value, perhaps a bit too much. You, Riku, have quite the pedigree, even coming to us from outside the village as you do.”

The Hokage inhales, exhales smokes, stares at his successor-and-predecessor’s face on the cliffside. Inhales. Exhales smoke. 

“Minato was a good man, and a wonderful teacher. When he was your age—well, maybe a bit younger—your uncle was quite like Sasuke. You have interacted with Uchiha Sasuke, I hope?”

“Yeah,” Riku says, distracted by the mental image of _Kakashi_ being anything like _Sasuke._

“He’s changed quite a bit since then. You could say he’s _a different person_.” There’s humor back in the old man’s voice as he says those last three words.

It’s an interesting thought. Given how badly some of his questions have gone so far, Riku’s reluctant to ask, but it’s not like he can count on his uncle for answers. And anyway, he’s leaving the village. Leaving Kakashi behind. (Just like his grandfather and his father and his uncle’s own teacher.) He won’t even get the chance to ask Kakashi himself. “What changed?”

“Ah, now there’s a story. Not mine to tell, but quite an interesting one, from what I remember.” Riku scowls as he realizes that he was _definitely_ just baited, but the Hokage only chuckles. “Now, now, I’m only teasing. At my age, I need all the entertainment I can get. You wouldn’t deny an old man one of the few things that makes him happy, would you?”

He doesn’t give Riku any chance to respond before he returns to his point. Whatever that is. “You’ve read about the Third Shinobi War, I know. Or perhaps read is the wrong word; I understand you encountered some difficulty with that. We should have expected it, but then you arrived and had no trouble speaking. I thought your father must have taught you.”

“Hatake Sho,” Riku says, a bit stiffly, “left when I was four. He didn’t teach me _anything_.” (Except how to leave. Had his father spent as long as he has, justifying his decisions to himself?)

The Hokage looks at him for a long moment, then shakes his head. “No, I suppose he didn’t. Pity. He didn’t place a seal on you, either, so I’m afraid I’m currently at a loss for how we are able to have this conversation in the first place.” He chuckles around his pipe. “It is a pleasure, though. I cannot remember the last time a truly _challenging_ puzzle presented itself. My thanks to you, Riku.”

That’s…weird. Either the old man has nothing better to do than puzzle over Riku’s apparently magical ability to speak ninja, or else he’s mocking Riku, though Riku can’t figure out what the angle on that would be. It doesn’t _feel_ like mockery, anyway, so maybe the Hokage really is just that bored.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and then, because he really sometimes can’t help himself, “Happy to help. Let me know whenever you’re bored, I can see what other puzzles I can come up with.” His tone is more sour than he would ever dare use with Kairi’s mother, and when he gets a second to think about what he just said, his face goes hot all over. “Uh—”

The Hokage grins. “I may just take you up on that, young man. You truly have no idea how enjoyable a challenge can be. In any case, I believe I was telling you about your uncle’s team. Minato was their teacher, as I said, and Kakashi was the young prodigy. And then there were Obito and Rin.”

“And they died,” Riku says, “and now he’s teaching Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura.” He’d just as soon not dwell on the morbid, depressing parts of this story, the parts where everyone in his uncle’s life either died on him or left him. Iruka glossed over a lot of it, and hadn’t mentioned Kakashi’s teacher at all, but now that Riku knows Kakashi’s teacher was the _Fourth Hokage_ , tidbits and trivia are rearranging themselves into a timeline. 

(He’s pretty sure Kakashi wasn’t much older than he is now, when everyone around him died or disappeared.)

The Hokage nods. “That’s true. But you can’t hurry a story, young man.” He shakes his head, although he has a wry, almost amused look on his face. “Humor an old man and let me finish.” As if to punctuate the sentence, he raises the pipe to his lips again, sucks in and blows out, one long stream of smoke, like an ancient dragon in a fairytale.

When the Hokage resumes his story, his tone is serious. “They died…you might say tragically. Obito, especially. When he comes back, you should ask your uncle about the eye he covers up. He’ll tell you when he’s ready, and I think it’s a story you should hear.”

“Why can’t you tell me?” Riku bites his lip to keep from adding that he won’t get the _chance_ to ask Kakashi. That would give too much away.

Sighing, the Hokage looks at him with an expression that Riku can only think of as _heavy_. It isn’t so much sad as it is resigned, like the weight of his whole life has put that expression on his face. It makes Riku feel like a little kid, begging his mom to tell him why Daddy isn’t home yet.

“Because it is a story that Kakashi himself must tell. It will do him good, and you as well, I think.”

There’s nothing Riku can say to that that won’t sound horribly selfish or too small, even in his mind. He just nods.

“Naruto and his friends are the first team that Kakashi has passed,” the Hokage says. “For years, he gave teams of new genin the same test—that test has passed from mentor to student through three wars and many generations. The Academy can train students to be skilled individually, but it is the jounin-instructors who must take those individuals and turn them into a team. When Kakashi failed team after team, there were some who felt he was being unfair, but I upheld his decision every time. A team without teamwork cannot survive. And then, Kakashi finally did pass a team.” He chuckles. “And then you came along. I understand your experience of the test was unconventional, but I believe it made Kakashi’s point quite nicely. And gave you quite the tour of the village, I expect.” 

He laughs, and Riku grins along, remembering less his time spent running around the village and more the maps Iruka’s students gave him, the ways they tried to help. (Has he met _anyone_ in this village who hasn’t, in some way, helped him? Neji, he supposes—although hadn’t Iruka said something about a seal? And Neji said no, Riku didn’t have one? Even _Sasuke_ had given him some pointers, when Riku tagged along with Naruto to the morning let’s-wait-for-Kakashi-and-practice-with-each-other Team 7 training sessions a couple times.)

“If you had grown up in this village, you would have most likely graduated with Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke. You would not have been placed in that team; there is a careful formula for team assignments. The best and worst students are always placed together, to balance the team, along with someone who can hopefully bridge the gap between them.”

Naruto had to be the worst student; there have been too many comments about him not knowing things for it to be one of the others. Plus, hadn’t Iruka’s students mentioned that Sasuke was the best student, and Sakura the best kunoichi? That was one thing that didn’t come up last night; Riku may never know the difference between a kunoichi and a regular ninja.

Riku snorts. “You should fire whoever put _that_ team together.” In fact, he’s pretty sure the whole idea is stupid; how is that setup supposed to do anything but cause a whole lot of resentment? From the best student, dragged down, and the worst student, found wanting, and even the one in the middle, stuck trying to make it all work out okay? It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Like giving kids sharp knives and magic powers in the first place, really. Disaster and tragedy just waiting to unfold.

“You think so?” the Hokage asks, mouth tilting up at one end. “I have faith in them. Those students are capable of amazing things. That is not the point I was making, though. Had you been raised in Konoha, you would be on another team. You would have different friends, different interests.”

It takes a few seconds for Riku to catch on. “You’re saying I would be a different person, if I’d grown up here.”

The Hokage grins. “Of course you would be. The people we know change us, just as the choices we make and the places we live change us. But I believe, if you think about it, the Hatake Riku who grew up in the village and the Hatake Riku sitting beside me now would likely have the same core.”

There’s nearly a solid minute of silence: Riku mulls that thought over, while the Hokage smokes his pipe.

“I find, with my age, that fresh eyes often catch what goes otherwise unnoticed,” the Hokage says, breaking the silence to change the conversation. “You have now spent some time in this village. What do you think of Konoha?”

Well now, here’s a dangerous line of questioning. If Riku is critical, will the Hokage be suspicious of him? If Riku’s too complimentary, though, won’t that backfire?

“You want _my_ opinion of your village?” Riku stalls for time. “I don’t think I know it that well.”

“First impressions rarely lead to knowing something _well_ , but I would find yours valuable all the same.”

“Huh.” Riku fidgets with his belt-pouch button. “Well, I think the first thing I noticed was the wall.”

“And what did you think of the wall?”

Maybe it’s the cozy midafternoon sun, or the smoke lingering in the air, or the gentle, reassuring tone of the Hokage’s voice, but Riku forgets himself for a second and says, “I didn’t think I could live somewhere with a miles-high _wall_ around it.” He bites his lip once it’s out, but he can’t exactly make the Hokage unhear that.

The Hokage’s expression reveals nothing. His tone is still gentle, reassuring, as he asks, “Why not?” 

Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb. “I thought I’d feel trapped. I did on the Islands, and that’s just an ocean, not a giant wall.” (An ocean he could see over, but never cross: is that _really_ any better than a wall? At least with a wall, he _knows_ there’s something on the other side; he has no idea if there’s anything he might want beyond the ocean.)

“Hmm.” The silence this time is brief. “And after you entered?”

“Trees.” Riku grins, a little self-conscious at the immediate answer, but this time, the Hokage smiles at him. He hasn’t misstepped again. “It’s so _green_ here. I can smell the trees everywhere I go—that, or flowers, or other growing things. It’s not bad, just different.”

“And what is your impression of the people of Konoha?”

This makes Riku pause. There’s a sharp divide here: he can, absolutely truthfully, say only positive things about the people here, with only a few exceptions. (Knowing about Sasuke’s family really dampens how irritating Riku finds him, but that may only last until he has to interact with the kid again.)

But.

Konoha is also the place where Chouji’s _in the hospital_ and _everyone_ let it happen. His teacher didn’t or couldn’t stop that. The Hokage didn’t stop it either. And the kid who did it now has a shot at _someone else_ , and who knows if that someone else will be able to avoid getting killed like Chouji did?

“Everyone’s been very helpful and welcoming to me,” Riku says. “The first person I met, besides my uncle, was Ms. Kurenai, who showed me how to introduce myself. She didn’t need to do that. Her team looked _wiped_.” Riku doesn’t really remember the kids—he’s pretty sure there were introductions, but damn if he can recall their names—but he _does_ remember how tired and bedraggled they looked. “It’s not like I asked for help or anything. But she stopped to talk to me, and then helped me when she saw I needed it.”

The Hokage nods, smile just barely pulling up the corners of his mouth. “But?”

“Huh?”

“There is something weighing on you. Something about this village, I think. I would hear what it is.”

So Riku is obvious about his misgivings. He doesn’t know _how_ he gave himself away, just that he must’ve, if the Hokage is asking him about it.

Riku has never been one for lying to authorities. Ignoring them, sure; disobeying them, if there was a good enough reason, okay. But when it’s time to own up for his actions, he’s never shied away from the truth. His mom, when it came up, would blame the fact that he was an only child: “You never learned how to pin the blame on someone else.”

So Riku, feeling caught out and tense, nevertheless says: “Chouji is in the _hospital_. They said the kid that did that is _in the next round_ , and he could’ve killed Chouji.” He, just barely, manages to keep his voice even and his volume contained. He does not manage to hold in the broad sweep of his arm, as if the injustice of this situation needs to spill out of him _somehow_. “How is that okay? How is everyone okay with that? Chouji is, what, thirteen? That’s _not_ alright!”

The Hokage stares at him. Riku wonders if this is it, if he’s going to be thrown into ninja-jail. He hasn’t _done_ anything except answer the Hokage’s question and pack a bag—no one can _prove_ anything.

“I cannot argue,” the Hokage says at last. “I have worked, this last decade, to keep war from these lands. I have made sacrifices, alliances, and choices I would not have, with that aim.” A deep sigh. “And yet, war looms, and it is the children who are among the first to see it.”

Riku blinks. “You’re not…okay with it?”

_That_ earns him a sharp look. “You think the village would send her children to be brutalized with no second thoughts?”

Yes. “Why didn’t anyone do anything?

Another sigh. “It is…complicated.” At Riku’s unimpressed look, the Hokage chuckles. “I suppose it would not seem so, to you. The other boy, who advanced to the finals, is the Kazekage’s son. It is common knowledge. To deny him, when he had…technically…won the match…”

There’s a class at the high school about politics, and Riku has heard enough from the older students about it to dread it. Sakura’s tutoring sessions have involved politics a few times, and Riku didn’t enjoy those bits.

“Politics isn’t an excuse for letting kids get hurt,” Riku says, because he feels that this is an important point.

“Indeed. I think too many in this village have forgotten that, myself included.” Inhale, exhale smoke. “It seems the village has a different view on who children are than where you come from. Regardless, I appreciate your honesty, and your perspective.”

With that, the Hokage puts out his pipe and returns it to whatever hidden pocket he pulled it out of. He stands up and places a hand on Riku’s head. Despite the fact that he uses almost no pressure, Riku can feel it, from his palm to his fingertips, as if there’s more than just a physical weight to them; he knows that the Hokage’s thumb is on the metal plate of the forehead-protector, just over the leaf symbol.

“Think about your choices, Riku,” the Hokage says. “Think about what kind of person Hatake Riku is, now. I hope he is someone who will help this village in ways no one else can, but that is, ultimately, up to you.”

Then he leaves, walking slowly toward his Tower.

What kind of person he is, huh. (Maybe the choices are all wrong, maybe there’s no right or good decisions to make, so it all comes down to this: which are the ones you can live with, and which aren’t?)

He’s trying to keep his promise to Kairi, trying to come back home alive and well to his mother. He made up for breaking Sora’s arm by making sure he will never, ever do it again, not even accidentally. He grew up without a father, and he and his mother poured all of their love into one another; he’s never lacked for attention, affection, or support, and has tried his best to return it in kind. 

(He’s the kind of friend who broke his best friend’s arm. He’s the kind of son his father abandoned when he was four. He’s skipping town while his roommate isn’t around, leaving while his uncle is away.)

His uncle left him _first_ , taking Sasuke away for training and leaving Riku behind with Sakura, Naruto, and Mr. Gai. (Only—Kakashi said it was just for the month. Kakashi said he would be coming back.) And look: Naruto’s been gone for just as long; Sakura has friends and Mr. Gai has his team. There’s no one here who _needs_ Riku. Sure, they’ll probably miss him, but they’ll get over it. (Maybe his father thought the same thing, before leaving—after all, didn’t Kakashi have a team at the time? And Riku had his mother. Riku can’t speak for Kakashi, but he knows that, at first, he _did_ miss his father. He doesn’t anymore, but it’s been close to ten years now.)

Sho left the islands in the dead of night, and maybe he’d done the same when he left the village. Maybe he just walked out those gates in the middle of the day like nothing was wrong. Maybe he cleaned up whatever house he shared with Kakashi, left everything so that Kakashi could go on with his life while Sho walked right out of it. 

Maybe Riku is the kind of son who follows in his father’s footsteps. (He hates that. _Hates_ it. Bad enough he looks like his father. Bad enough to come here, where his father was born and raised; bad enough he _had_ to come here. But to think that he’s even acting like his father…)

His father didn’t stick around for the war. His father didn’t stick around for children maiming children. His father never even tried to stop any of it. Kakashi never said why Sho left; Riku’s mom never said, either. She assured Riku that it wasn’t his fault, but he doesn’t quite believe her anymore. Maybe he did something to remind his father of these kids—the ones who hurt each other, like Gaara hurt Chouji, or who live by themselves without knowing how to take care of themselves, like Naruto—who live by themselves in a place that ought to be bustling with their very own, very large family, like Sasuke.

Children who want to be ninja because it’s glamorous, because it’s some kind of abstract _duty_ , and stay ninja because they can’t let their friends down.

Who are Riku’s friends, again? He wouldn’t count Sasuke, Neji, Tenten, or Lee, and he’s not sure about Shikamaru or Chouji, but Ino’s edging into friendship, and Naruto and Sakura—yes, they’re friends. And Iruka too, at least as much as an adult can be friends with someone Riku’s age. Mr. Gai is more of a mentor, really, but maybe that should count for something. The Islands are full of his friends, sure, but… 

Riku never promised Kairi that he’d come back right away; he told her, just like Kakashi had told him, that he’d be back, but just to visit, and not for a while. And she said she and Sora would come for him if he didn’t.

On the one hand: leaving is definitely what his father would do— _did do_ , really; on the other: leaving Konoha makes sense, because the whole ninja system is messed up. Riku _did_ promise Kairi that he would keep himself in one piece. 

Then again, Chouji is still in one piece. Shaken, yes, and pretty badly off there for a while going by his teammates’ behavior, but he’s fine now. Going to make a full recovery, last Riku checked.

Konoha isn’t at war, and most of the names on the Memorial Stone are from the wars, based on Sakura’s history lessons. If Riku’s careful to never take a mission above C-rank, he can avoid a huge majority of the danger of ninja missions; if he can put up with just D-rank missions, he’ll virtually never have to worry about his health and safety. (And, some worm of a thought in the back of his head whispers, the Hokage had talked about _helping the village the way no one else can_. That sounds an awful lot like changing the parts he doesn’t like, that the ninja take for granted. If he could, eventually, make it so no other kid got hurt like Chouji, _can_ he walk away from that opportunity?)

Kakashi and Naruto will be coming home soon. They expect him to be where they left him. Even Sasuke expects that, if he thinks about Riku at all. Sakura and Iruka will be worried if he isn’t around, if he leaves without telling them. Mr. Gai will miss him tomorrow morning, might even come to check on him and discover an empty bed, an empty apartment, like Riku’s mother woke up to, almost ten years ago.

He’s been pretty careful not to make anyone any promises, but he thinks about the weight of his regret when he left the apartment for what he thought was the last time. Sometimes, he thinks, you make promises without meaning to. Sometimes you promise people that you’ll be there for them just because you have been before, and maybe there’s a good reason for leaving, but that won’t help the other person who’s counting on you.

Riku remembers: the devastated expression on Naruto’s face when Riku came back to the newly-clean apartment, his roommate, and his uncle. The way Naruto was so insistent that Riku not think he was _required_ to clean up. The implication that Riku, who had been foisted on Naruto with no warning and no agreement, was welcome in Naruto’s apartment, no questions asked, no rent, no nothing required. How worried Naruto looked, when he wiped the floor with someone a year older than himself.

Riku remembers: the way Lee grinned when he said he would be testing Riku to see if Riku deserved to call himself Sakura’s student. How he felt, when he scored his only bull’s-eye thinking of Sakura’s tutoring. Sakura teaching him a jutsu when she definitely didn’t have to, and sticking around to be supportive during his test when she surely had better ways to spend her time than watching him mess up and get his ass kicked twice in a row.

Riku tallies up the things Kakashi’s gotten him, the same things he listed off for Sakura before, but this time he weighs them not against his needs or wants or some arbitrary idea of what he deserves, but against Kakashi’s tiny apartment and his dead family and his dead team and his own brother, who gave Riku little and Kakashi even less. Riku thinks about the coin-purse in his backpack with the wave pattern that Kakashi bought after collecting Riku from the Islands; the shirt in the same color as most of the shirts Riku picks out for himself; the weapons, new and in perfect condition; the window-seat, set underneath the window so there’s a second place to sit in Naruto’s kitchen. Riku considers who arranged for Iruka and Sakura and Mr. Gai to teach him, who arranged for Naruto to house him, who arranged for Riku to learn what he needed to in order to feel safe in his skin again.

Riku sighs as he gets up, wincing at the pins and needles in his feet. He wonders what kind of mental math his father did, to be able to walk away not once but twice; wonders if it was easier the second time, because the first weighed him down toward leaving from the beginning.

If the core of a person only becomes apparent from the whole of the choices they make, then that means that every choice along the way is one more clue, one step closer to the truth. Each choice becomes a choice not only among the various options, but also a chance to decide: will this part of me be my trunk, or is it a branch? If it’s a branch, it can be cut away, and the tree—Riku—will survive.

Can he cut away the part of himself that’s loyal, that keeps his promises, and still be Riku? That’s what the question here really is—not whether he’s more loyal to Konoha or the Islands, his uncle and Naruto and Sakura and the others or his mother and Kairi and Sora and the others, which is what he thought he was choosing between.

He left the Islands because he needed to, and the fact of the matter is, he _doesn’t_ need to leave Konoha. Not yet. He will leave one day—immediately, if he finds out that his friends on the Islands need him. Right now, though, he has friends here, too, and family. He’s made some promises without meaning to, and as long as he can fulfill them without breaking his promises to Kairi, he thinks he should.

His friends and family back on the Islands like the Riku who’s loyal, who keeps his promises, who takes care of people when he can. The Riku who’s a good friend and a decent son. He can’t cut out the part of him that follows through on his word and expect to be the same person Sora and Kairi made friends with; that wouldn’t be fair to anyone, and maybe that’s why, in the end, his father left.

Riku makes his choice, and this time, he decides not to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will probably continue to be sporadic over the summer, but I'm gonna try to have the next chapter out before fall. I have _a lot_ of ideas for where this is going, and I'm really excited to get there! You know. Hopefully sometime before KH4 comes out.
> 
> For this chapter in particular, I went back and forth on this particular setup; the original version of this story had a Riku who was _much_ more on-board with leaving Konoha ASAP, which got largely revised away until Chouji's situation came up. And, of course, Riku's decision here is based on a certain understanding of his relative safety in Konoha, which. Well. Canon is about to reassert itself, _hard_ , in the next couple chapters.
> 
> Also! We're going to start getting _more major_ departures from canon soon, caused by changes in the lead-up events. You know that trope, Stations of the Canon, where everything still goes the same? Yeah. Yeah, no.


	9. The Chuunin Exam Finals Are Here!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So we've got Shino vs Gaara, Kiba vs Naruto, Shikamaru vs Tenten, Hinata vs Sasuke, and Ino vs Temari, capped off with the final match! All from Riku's POV.
> 
> Chapter also includes: bonding with peers, trauma, non-experts dealing with trauma, and a [spoiler] from Kingdom Hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! It hasn't even been a whole month!

Apparently, Sakura’s been talking to Ino, because two days after Riku becomes a genin of Konoha—and only maybe half a day after he decides to _stay_ a genin _in_ Konoha—they, along with Chouji and Shikamaru, show up at the apartment with enough raw ingredients to cook a feast.

“Uh,” Riku says, when it’s all laid out on the counter and table.

Ino drags Chouji off to requisition more chairs—and possibly a bigger table—from…somewhere. Riku isn’t clear on any of the details, as Ino grumbles them incomprehensibly on her way out the door, and even after his morning session with Mr. Gai, he’s still unfit for human interaction. Maybe _because_ of it, today. Mr. Gai seems to think that Riku ought to be way bendier than he actually is, and it is every morning’s mission to get that much closer to impersonating a rubber band.

He looks to Sakura, who stares just as helplessly at the array of ingredients—fish and white meat and dark meat, noodles and rice, more vegetables than Riku’s seen outside of a vegetable booth, as well as a number of spices and sauces and herbs that he has no idea what to do with.

He looks to Shikamaru, slumped over the table like he’s short on sleep. Riku bets no one hauls _Shikamaru_ out of bed for training at six thirty.

“Any preferences?”

///

As can only be expected, given what Riku has to work with, he ends up filling the already half-full fridge and still having more. Sakura helps him, and Ino and Chouji give advice when they show up (with both chairs _and_ another table, a square fold-up thing that almost doesn’t fit next to Naruto’s round one); Shikamaru remains useless, and looks like he’s sleeping every time Riku glances at him.

“It’s a celebration feast,” Sakura explains, eyes roaming over the food. “For you passing.”

“I didn’t think there’d be this much,” Ino admits. “We all sort of pitched in. About half of it is from his,” she jerks a thumb at Shikamaru, “parents’ kitchen, and his mom said to use it all up. Maybe we should’ve brought more people…”

Riku shrugs. “You guys can just take what doesn’t fit.”

Chouji seems thrilled about that, and Ino makes a face before agreeing.

This breakfast—or The Feast, Part One, as Riku thinks of it—is a lot louder than Riku’s breakfasts back on the Islands. Usually, he gets up and makes himself toast or eggs or whatever leftovers are in the fridge, and his mom gets up a few hours later and does the same. That started when Riku began going to school, and it spilled out onto weekends, then holidays, then summer break, until dinner became the big meal that they cooked and ate together, talking about what happened during the day.

With a table full of ninjas, there really isn’t a shortage of topics, especially once Ino decides that she’s fascinated by the whole idea of boats. Not so much the experience of boating, which would apparently ruin her hair; most of the appeal, Riku figures, is the obvious daydream she’s having of throwing Shikamaru overboard as shark-bait.

“So you just catch all the fish you can eat?” Chouji asks, looking both intrigued and a little put off at the thought. “And if you _want_ fish, you _have_ to catch it yourself?”

Riku shrugs. “Pretty much. I mean, people barter, but munny’s for stuff that you make, mostly. The only people who don’t fish are the ones who spend all their time doing other things, like the mayor, or the teachers.” He kicks Shikamaru lightly under the table. “So, figured out how to read what I write yet?”

Shikamaru glares at him, which Riku takes as a no.

Ino rolls her eyes and says, “We’ve barely had a chance to _sleep_. Since Shikamaru and I both made it to the finals, Asuma’s been working us extra hard, especially now that Chouji’s out.”

“There’s a bet,” adds Chouji. “He wouldn’t tell us for what, though, just that he wants to win it.”

Shikamaru snorts. “He just doesn’t want to lose to Kurenai or Kakashi.”

“I’ve met Kurenai’s team once,” Riku says, though their names still aren’t coming to mind. “They seemed nice enough, but I don’t really remember much about them.”

“Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino,” Sakura says, neatly swallowing and without any crumbs on her mouth despite the fact that she’s been tearing through the one fish that Riku tried, mostly successfully, to bread. “Hinata is Neji’s cousin. I don’t think you would know the other two…”

“Naruto might have mentioned Kiba,” Shikamaru says, but doesn’t elaborate, even when everyone looks at him.

Chouji nods, and says around a mouthful of some kind of rice-fish roll that was wholly Sakura’s doing, “We used to hang out, Shikamaru, Kiba, Naruto, and I. Back when we were little.”

“I remember! You used to ditch class.” Ino shakes her head, smiling. “Iruka would get so furious at you guys.”

Riku, meanwhile, is trying to process kind-of-quiet, slow, thoughtful, smart Shikamaru intentionally hanging out and even ditching class with loud, fast, careless, clueless Naruto. Maybe Shikamaru was more energetic as a child.

That turns the conversation to Academy stories, and Riku spends the rest of the meal amazed that the people around him didn’t blow themselves and/or the village up years ago. Apparently, it was a _frequent_ and _very close_ thing.

After everyone is full, they all help pack up the food. Chouji walks out with the most, although everyone takes at least one container. Chouji also takes the fold-up table and extra chairs with him, a casual display of strength that has Riku a little worried, given how recently Chouji left the hospital. No one else says anything, though, so he keeps his worries to himself.

“We didn’t ask if you would mind all this,” Sakura says, after Team Ten leaves. “Sorry. You didn’t mind, right?”

Riku stares at her. “Why would I?” They brought _food_ , and sure, it would have been embarrassing if they implied it was because Riku’s starving in the apartment or something, but no one had. It wasn’t really a party—more like a celebratory brunch, with people Riku doesn’t mind spending a morning talking to (or talking around, in the case of Shikamaru most of the time).

She smiles. “Good. I’m glad.”

She leaves soon after that, but tells him she’ll pick him up tomorrow morning.

“The finals are tomorrow,” she says. “You have to come. Naruto and Sasuke will be fighting, and Shikamaru and Ino, and a bunch of the others.”

“What about Gai’s team?”

“Tenten will be there. In fact, she’s fighting Shikamaru. Lee and Neji aren’t in the finals, though; they fought Sasuke and Naruto in the preliminaries, so…” Sakura shrugs.

“Oh.” He can’t quite wrap his head around how they must feel, losing to _Sasuke and Naruto_ —and this isn’t the first time he’s thought about those matchups, since he found out. Maybe a little like if Selphie or Tidus ever handed him his ass.

“Yeah. Anyway, you’ll come, right?”

He nods. “Sure.”

“Great!”

///

The next day, Riku’s ready to go when Sakura shows up at his door. He’s been up for a while, of course, even though Mr. Gai couldn’t spend any time at all with him today. Doing exercises on his own isn’t even close to the same, but every time he tries to reduce the number of reps, Mr. Gai’s disappointed face springs to mind.

Riku, if anything, has stretched out more this morning than he has in a while. He doesn’t notice it as much as he thought he would, though.

“You ready?” Sakura asks. She looks a lot less confident than when she came to collect him for his genin exam: she keeps fidgeting with her hands, and her face is paler than it ought to be. When he says yes, she waits for him to lock up, tapping the toe of her sandal against the floor in staccato beats: _tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap_. Then she glances at the railing. “Gai hasn’t gone over jumping with you yet, has he? Too bad. Guess it’s the stairs for us.”

Riku stops her from heading for the stairs; her arm is tense when he wraps a hand around her bicep. “Show me, and I’ll meet you downstairs.” He’s been able to figure out some things on his own—although, the first time he saw Mr. Gai after the genin exam, the instructor had sat him down _on the grass_ and made him swear up and down never to do what he’d done in that fight.

If he hasn’t seen a maneuver a dozen times, including at half-speed, and practiced it himself another hundred times under Mr. Gai’s direct supervision, he will inevitably mess something up and _break_ something, or _tear_ something, and that kind of damage can be permanent for someone his age! Apparently.

Still, if he sees her do it, maybe he’ll know when Mr. Gai starts building up to it—like that kick Lee taught Sakura. Riku hasn’t learned it yet, but he learned the first half of it yesterday. Knowing what he could do with it later sucked some of the tedium out of Mr. Gai’s endless repetitions at various speeds, interspersed with wind-sprints and burpees.

Shrugging, Sakura puts one hand on the railing and _vaults_ over it. Riku leans over after her, tracking her fall—no, her _landing_. She lands in a crouch, then straightens, like she didn’t just clear several stories the way he might drop over a three-foot ledge.

“Wow,” he says to no one but himself, and hurries to join her at the bottom, where he repeats: “ _Wow_.”

She colors a bit, tucking some strands of hair behind her ear. “It wasn’t that impressive. Academy students learn it.”

“It’s impressive to _me_.”

Pleased-and-flustered is a good look on Sakura, _much_ better than tense-and-nervous. She waves his comment away, but she’s visibly more relaxed as they make their way through the city.

“Chouji and Lee are saving us seats. You don’t mind sitting with us, do you?”

“No. Why would I?” He shoots her a puzzled look, but she just smiles in response.

There are more people attempting to cram themselves through the gate of the stadium all at once than Riku has ever seen in one place. Most of them are shouting, too, and a terrifying number have forehead-protectors. Worse for Riku is the absolutely dizzying number of smells: flowery perfumes, musky colognes, a dozen different kinds of soap, not to mention sweat, the lingering scent of blood, and a shock of food-smell that Riku honestly wishes he could filter out, because it makes him want to hurl.

Sakura stops them about a block away, where the crowd is obvious but not oppressive. “I’m so sorry, I totally forgot!” And out of the pouch on her thigh, she pulls foot after foot of fabric that, eventually, resolves itself into a blue-green scarf with an abstract swirling pattern.

“I was talking to Mr. Gai, and he mentioned that Kakashi sometimes got headaches from intense smells, and I remembered that _you_ have a really good sense of smell too, so I thought—maybe it’s silly, but…”

“You got me a _scarf_?” Riku asks, just barely polite enough not to grab it out of her hands.

She colors even more deeply than earlier. “It’s not a present or anything! I already had it! But I never wear it, so if it would be useful—”

“— _Please_ ,” he cuts her off.

She hands it over, and he wraps the cloth around his face. It smells like Sakura: old books, parchment, ink, perfume. He wraps the ends so that they’re not hanging loose, and tucks it all into his shirt; he’s in the yellow one and the black pants that Kakashi got him, so with the scarf, he’s all decked out in his preferred color scheme.

Sakura giggles at him, one hand curling in front of her mouth like she’s trying to hide her amusement. “You look…like you’re pretending to be Kakashi.”

He’s sure that’s not true: his uncle’s color sense runs towards the Konoha-standard navy-and-olive. Still, given their resemblance, most people will probably make the same connection Sakura just did.

Riku’s not sure he minds. Everyone _already_ immediately guesses they’re related; does it hurt any to preemptively confirm it? Especially when Riku gets to avoid being swamped with odors every time he leaves the apartment? (It’s usually not as bad as today, but it’s always _annoying_.)

“Thank you,” he says, speaking louder than usual to offset how he’s muffled by the fabric. “I mean it. _Thank you_.”

After the necklace Kairi gave him, this is possibly the nicest gift anyone’s ever given to him, present or no. Riku knows some _excellent_ girls. He resolves to introduce them as soon as he can figure out _how_ ; he can’t imagine anyone not liking Kairi, and she deserves to have more girl-friends than just Selphie.

Sakura is still pink in the cheeks as they inch through the crowd. They’re finally ushered up to the gate, where she passes two bits of stiff paper to the nearest ANBU. Riku’s glad for the masked ninja, because otherwise, he’d be a bit worried about getting trampled by the crowd.

The ANBU wave them through, and Sakura steers Riku with a hand on his elbow. Once they actually get inside the stadium, the crowd thins out, people streaming off in all directions to find their seats. It must not be any kind of assigned seating, because Sakura’s scanning the rows of seats looking at faces, and she’s far from the only one.

Riku glances around, trying to pick out Chouji or Lee (surely Lee should be visible at a distance?), but he doesn’t actually see them until Sakura guides them through what feels like half the stadium.

Chouji spots them first, and waves enthusiastically. When they approach, Lee—and Neji, who Riku’s a little shocked to see with them—get up to let both of them get to their seats. Apparently, Neji has the aisle, with Lee between him and Riku, then Sakura, then Chouji. (Sakura is adamant about going first to secure the seat next to Chouji, but if Lee’s disappointed at the arrangement, he shows no sign: his smile is as bright and enthusiastic when he turns it on Riku as it ever is.) Riku isn’t complaining: sandwiched between people he knows, with the scarf blocking out most of the smells of both crowd and stadium and muffling some sounds as well, he can stave off the approaching headache from so much sensory input.

Others settle into seats nearby, but no one Riku recognizes. Down below, the arena is empty of people, but not of _stuff_ : there are some trees, boulders, bushes. For hiding in, maybe, and tossing sharp, pointy things at the enemy.

“How long until it starts?” he asks as he sits down.

Sakura answers, “Not long,” and then addresses Neji, leaning forward, “Ah, Neji, I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I thought you’d be sitting with your family.”

Neji doesn’t react, but Lee winces, just the tiniest bit. “Neji is here to support our teammate, just as I am!”

To this, Neji nods, and adds, “I am also here to…see whether Naruto will realize his dream.” After a beat, he adds, with no inflection and even less emotion on his face, “And I am here to support the Hyuuga heir in her match against the Uchiha.”

Lee grins. “Sasuke is a challenging opponent. I’m going to cheer for Hinata, too!” He then hastens to add, with what looks like genuine worry, “I hope you will understand why I am not rooting for your teammate, Sakura. I assure you, if he is victorious, I will cheer the loudest for his victories in the following matches! If I do not, I will—”

“Hey!” Chouji protests, cutting Lee off and leaning even further to see him past Sakura. (Riku crams himself as far back in his seat as he can, but it doesn’t seem to help.) “He’d be fighting Ino next!”

Sakura waves this off. “Ino’s decent, but Sasuke is _amazing_ , and that’s _before_ Kakashi took him off for a month of one-on-one training. Even Mr. Asuma can’t expect Ino to beat Sasuke!”

Chouji grumbles and looks like he would _like_ to argue the point, but either he can’t or he realizes that he’s outnumbered. (Riku, of course, doesn’t count, but Lee seems to be on Sakura’s side, and Neji looks like he’d also like to not count.)

“ _I_ want to know who beat you,” Riku says, nudging Sakura with his elbow, “so I know who to boo.”

She shoots him a grateful look, and he grins back. “Temari, of the Sand. Gaara’s sister. Ino’s fighting her.” Sakura’s hands twist in her lap, similar to how she was fidgeting earlier. “I hope she’s careful. That girl was deadly serious. I think, if she had to, she would’ve killed me to move on.”

Riku shudders, and sees Chouji shaking as well. “And who’s fighting Gaara?” he asks, with a careful eye on Chouji, in case saying the would-be murderer’s name a second time is too much.

“Shino.” It’s Chouji who says it, with tension clear in every line of his body. “He’s teammates with Kiba and Hinata.”

Kiba, who’s fighting Naruto, and Hinata, who’s fighting Sasuke. (It seems like those two keep getting matched with two-thirds of other teams. If they fight Temari and Gaara sometime today, they’ll have done it three times—it’s the kind of thing his mother would call _lucky_ , and Riku wonders if that’s good or bad luck.)

“So we’re hoping he’s going to win,” Sakura says, with forced cheerfulness, like she’s deliberately not adding, _even though we’re all pretty sure he doesn’t stand a chance_. “They’re up first, then Naruto and Kiba. Whoever wins is going to fight Naruto next round.”

So: we hope it’s Shino. Between this and Ino’s match with the girl who kicked her ass, Sakura’s nervousness is starting to make sense. All Riku can do is be here for her, though, and remind her that her teammates and friends are badasses (even, he’s assuming, the ones he’s never met or seen fight).

Chouji snorts, and Sakura whirls on him. “Hey! He’s your friend, too; he’s doing a lot better now.”

Across Lee, Neji very obviously takes notice: he turns his body away from the aisle, odd white-irised eyes focusing on Sakura. “In the elimination round, he said he was the dead last.”

Riku believes that, but, “He’s been training the whole month. I haven’t seen him once; he hasn’t come home at all.”

“Ever since Wave, he’s really improved,” Sakura adds. “He beat a guy who’d knocked out _Sasuke_.”

“Well, good,” Chouji says, apparently backtracking in his disbelief. “Someone needs to knock Team Eight out of the Finals—you know, Asuma was complaining to _us_ this morning that Kurenai’s whole team made it in? They’re her _first_ team. Ino told him maybe Kurenai was just naturally a better teacher, did he consider _that_ , and he just laughed.”

Sakura chuckles while Chouji rolls his eyes and throws his hands up dramatically, but the way she cuts her eyes at Riku makes him wonder if she’s thinking the same thing he is: at least Asuma’s _in_ Konoha.

“Hey, they’re lining up!” Lee says, elbowing Riku to get his attention.

Sure enough, there’s movement below, and a relative quiet swarms over the stands. Riku watches the genin lining up; he recognizes Naruto, Ino, Shikamaru, and Tenten, but also in line are a redhead, a third blonde, and three dark-haired figures—one with hair that looks almost blue at this distance, the other holding a white dog, and the last in a long coat that Riku intensely envies. It looks _so warm_ , and between the length and the collar, he wants one in black. With blue accents, maybe, or a yellow pattern on the back.

He doesn’t see Sasuke, and he would recognize that hair. He notices the absence at the same time the others do. Chouji, halfway through opening a bag of chips, stops. Sakura and Lee shoot worried looks at each other.

“He’s just late,” Sakura says.

“It’s probably my uncle’s fault,” Riku says. “Sasuke isn’t the first match, you said, so don’t worry.”

“Second-to-last,” Lee says, and he raises a fist to pound it into his other palm. “Do not worry! Your jounin-instructor will make sure he arrives before his match begins!”

“Yeah.” Sakura nods, giving them a tight smile. “You guys are right. Thanks.”

Then an older guy walks up to the genin, probably saying something. Soon enough, all but two of the genin leave the arena: the redhead and the dark-haired one with the long coat stay behind. “Which one’s Shino?” Riku murmurs to Sakura.

“The one in the coat,” she says. “Gaara and his sister are the only Sand-nin who made it to the Finals, but you can’t make out forehead-protectors from here.”

Riku nods; he’d recognize the Sand symbol from the map of the nations. “Good luck, Shino,” he says, watching as the older guy raises an arm.

“It’s _starting_ ,” someone hisses a couple rows over, clearly not intended to be as loud as it comes out in the sudden hush. There’s a smatter of chuckling, and then everyone’s attention is on the arena.

Gaara doesn’t move, and for almost a minute, it looks like nothing happens. Then Shino darts to the left, out of the way of a sudden spike of sand.

Riku leans forward in his seat, eyes narrowed as he looks from one to the other. It’s hard to make out exactly what’s happening; they aren’t exchanging blows, but they aren’t using jutsu, either. On either side of him, Lee and Sakura are leaning forward as well; Neji isn’t, but the veins around his eyes are bulging again.

Gaara doesn’t take a step towards Shino; he doesn’t take a step away. He just stands, and the sand pursues Shino.

“Is he using a jutsu?” Riku asks, looking away from the fight to make sure his question doesn’t upset Chouji.

For his part, Chouji doesn’t go white again, although his grip on the bag of chips tightens. “No, I don’t think so. The sand comes out of that thing on his back, and he’s moving it, but he doesn’t _do_ anything.”

“Huh.” Riku looks back at the arena, then frowns, eyes scanning the size of the attack Shino just dodged. “That one looked smaller.”

“It looked the same to me,” Sakura says, but she has her eyes narrowed too, and on the next attack, she concedes, “Maybe they _are_ getting smaller. He might be saving up for a big offensive?”

“I hope Kurenai’s close by,” Chouji says. “Shino’s small. He won’t last as long.”

Riku tries very hard not to think too much about that, because otherwise he’s going to be sick. And if Shino _does_ get killed here, in front of all these people…

Gaara, as it turns out, isn’t the one on the offensive; at the next blast of sand, a dark mass crawls out onto Shino’s upraised arms and seems to _eat_ the sand.

“…I guess he spent his month figuring those out,” Sakura says, sounding impressed.

“Figuring what out?”

Sakura, grinning, says, “Sand-eating bugs.”

Riku eyes the dark mass around Shino—spilling into a lopsided circle around his feet and then advancing toward Gaara—and bites back his initial response of “ _Bugs_?”

For a minute, it looks like Shino will win. His bugs decimate Gaara’s supply of sand, so much that the container on his back visibly shrinks from where Riku sits. Gaara even steps back, arms at his side, and Shino walks forward, pressing his advantage.

Then the edge of bugs closest to Gaara begin exploding, a layer of stained sand rising above them. Shino flinches back at the first, and it spreads like a wave, getting closer to the Leaf-nin until that sand is wrapped around _him_ , holding him in the air—

“Stop him!” Sakura shouts, rising up out of her seat.

She isn’t the only one. Around them, there’s a cacophony of spectators calling for the proctor, the jounin, the Hokage to do something.

Only Riku’s eyes, though, are on Chouji, not Shino.

Chouji stares, wide-eyed, at the scene—Riku can’t look—Chouji’s face is once again totally pale, and even his lips tremble. There’s water in his eyes. The bag in his hand is crushed; any chips left in it have to be pulverized. _Pulverized like Shino_ —

Sakura sinks back into her seat with a sigh; Riku glances, morbidly, at the arena, and sees a woman holding Shino up, his arm slung over her shoulders. She’s gone a moment later, Shino with her. The sand stirs maniacally, like a sudden storm has hit the stadium. It shreds the grass and shrubbery, reduces the few rocks to dust, and scores thick lines on the trees. Some branches are stripped of leaves, but most escape unscathed.

“I don’t think Gaara liked that,” Riku says. Like the hiss at the beginning of the match, it comes out too loud, and a few people turn in their seats to look at him.

“I think you’re right,” Sakura says.

Chouji nods. “Good.”

///

Riku’s pulse is still racing from the end of Shino and Gaara’s match when Naruto and Kiba step up.

Kiba has a dog with him, which apparently isn’t cheating. What _would_ count as cheating, if not backup and killing the opponent?

Helping out your teammate in their round, probably; maybe attacking the audience. (Please, _please_ let attacking the audience be cheating.) Attacking your opponent before the match begins? Are they allowed to try to take out the competition before it even _gets_ to a match?

Is that part of why Kakashi took Sasuke out of the village? Riku really doubts that any of the other Konoha ninja would do anything like that, but maybe the Sand-nins might?

He stews on the questions while Naruto and Kiba and a Kiba-lookalike (the dog isn’t just a dog, of _course_ it isn’t, it’s a _ninja dog_ that can _turn into a copy of its owner_ , Riku can’t even muster the willpower to be shocked by this), and so he’s the only one in their row who’s not even really paying attention to the match. It takes a long minute for the shaking in his peripheral to register, though; in his own defense, Sakura’s in the way, and _she_ clearly doesn’t notice anything.

Riku tries to catch Chouji’s attention, but short of reaching around Sakura to physically touch the guy, nothing seems to work. Clearing his throat gets drowned out by the crowd; Chouji’s staring at his hands and knees, so he doesn’t see Riku trying to make eye contact.

Luckily, the match is over fairly quickly—Naruto drops a smoke bomb right under the dog-Kiba’s nose; from the screeching and gagging, Riku’s willing to bet that Naruto’s doctored the bomb to include either something dogs are allergic to or a whole lot of pepper. From his own experience, getting hot pepper in a super-sensitive nose is a _wonderful_ way to get out of school for a week, and also to vomit up more food and bile than the human body ought to be able to contain.

Kiba surrenders immediately to get medical help for the dog; Naruto looks a little ashamed, even from so far away.

As soon as the match is called in Naruto’s favor, Riku reaches over and knocks his knuckles gently into Chouji’s shoulder. “Hey, I need to use the restroom. Is there one nearby?”

Sakura makes a face at him, but Riku’s not sure if that’s because of the question or because he’s about to abandon his post as the blockade between her and Lee. Chouji, on the other hand, nods enthusiastically and lets Riku tug him out of his seat, down the row, and all the way to the back of the stadium.

“There should be a restroom somewhere around here; I’m sure I saw one, coming in…”

Riku doesn’t protest or really say anything when Chouji halts to watch Shikamaru and Tenten’s match, once it starts. They’re even further back now, so it’s difficult to make out precisely what either is doing. Tenten pulls out _something_ huge, and then uses the huge thing to make rain in the arena.

No, not rain, Riku realizes, noting the size of what’s coming out of—that has to be a scroll. Tenten picks up a long, thin weapon—spear? Staff? Ninja polearm of some sort?—and starts chasing Shikamaru, who does a pretty good job at getting the hell out of the way.

Then Tenten freezes, and Chouji goes tense, but in a good way. Maybe. He’s grinning, at least.

“Go on, Shikamaru, _get_ her,” he says, and Riku doesn’t think his enthusiasm has anything at all to do with Tenten. “Come on.”

For long, tense seconds, nothing happens. Then, Tenten springs to action, closing with Shikamaru and swinging the staff at his head. No, scratch that, there’s a glint of metal in the sunlight: definitely some type of polearm. Shikamaru dodges, proving himself just as bendy as Gai has recently started insisting Riku can be, before picking up a weapon of his own from the ground, where Tenten’s weapon-raining technique had left them.

Shikamaru’s is a sword: short and curved, from what Riku can see and guess based on the glinting sunlight; if Shikamaru has much experience with swords, he doesn’t show it, using the weapon mostly to block Tenten’s strikes. She’s got reach on him now, though, and even from such a huge distance, Riku can tell she has the advantage.

Having fought her, even when she wasn’t taking him very seriously, he thinks he’s more than qualified to assess when Tenten is clearly kicking someone’s ass.

“ _Yes_ ,” Chouji hisses, fist pumping in the air, forcing Riku to reevaluate.

Tenten’s frozen again, only this time, she’s incredibly close to the arena wall. Shikamaru makes several gestures like he’s threatening to throw his sword—stupid move—and Tenten mimics each one with her spear/polearm, which may or may not be stupider. Riku’s not very familiar with the weapon type, so he’s not sure; spears are _meant_ to be thrown, but he’s used to fishing spears, not monsters taller than Tenten like the one in her hands. Anyway, the way both of them are miming throwing would _really_ only be good for the sword.

Chouji’s beaming down at the arena, but he either notices Riku’s confusion or just needs to talk to _someone_ about his awesome teammate. “Shikamaru can control people through their shadows. He caught Tenten, and now she’s toast.”

However, after a long moment where Shikamaru appears to be weighing the sword in his hand, Tenten jerks suddenly, and backflips away from him. He holds up his hands, and just like that, an announcer is calling out that the match goes to Tenten.

Chouji looks—less devastated than Riku’s immediately afraid he might, but confused. “Why would he throw the match?” The question is a whisper, so who knows if Riku’s supposed to hear it and try to answer.

Frankly, he doesn’t _know_ the answer. He does know, from his interactions with Tenten and her team, that this is possibly the single most frustrating thing Shikamaru could have done to her. Even if Tenten didn’t care about this at all (which Riku strongly doubts), Mr. Gai must be _steaming_ right now.

Winning when you don’t deserve it can feel much, much worse than a hard-fought loss. Riku knows _that_ feeling personally, now.

The next match-up announced is Sasuke versus Hinata, and true to form, Sasuke and Kakashi explode into existence in the center of the arena right as the announcer is making the last call for them. Riku’s just a little surprised: if there’d been a bet, he would have put down all the munny—yen, rather—he has left on the Hokage bumping Sasuke’s match ‘til last, and Kakashi _still_ showing up at the very last second.

Still, now’s as good a time as any for Riku to try to get Chouji settled down. He’s still vibrating a little bit, although not nearly as badly as when they were in their seats.

“Let’s get you to that restroom and back before Ino’s match,” Chouji says, apparently also content to miss Sasuke and Hinata’s bout.

They make their way into the hall, like they’re going outside; there are two unobtrusive doors with symbols that, presumably, indicate which is the boys’ room and which the girls’ room. (If Riku _did_ have to go, bringing someone is apparently necessary. Good to know.) They both stop in the middle of the hall, not blocking the doorways but not going in, either.

Riku observes Chouji: still twitchy, breathing a little too fast, and sweaty—like after a night terror, _not_ like after a good, healthy training session. Face flushed, which Riku thinks might be a step up from sheet-white, but certainly not in the realm of “okay.”

Well, time to ride the wave. “Are you doing okay? It looked like Shino’s fight really shook you up.”

Chouji laughs. It sounds forced. “I’m fine!” At Riku’s skeptical look, he repeats, “I’m _fine_. Besides, that was three matches ago. I got over it.”

Riku’s pretty sure the problem happened a month ago and that Chouji is _definitely_ not over it. “I know I’m not your teammate or anything, but Ino’s my friend, and she can’t be here for you right now. I know if one of _my_ friends went through what you did, I’d want the rest of my friends to do what they could, so… If you want to talk about it, I’m all ears, okay? And if you don’t, you don’t need to lie or anything. I’m not gonna _make_ you talk about it if that makes you uncomfortable.”

It’s awkward to say it all out loud, but Riku concentrates on channeling his inner Sora and it comes a little easier. Helpfully, everything he says is true: he really _does_ hope that his friends have helped each other in his place, and while he’s not sure what Chouji needs right now, if he can give it, he will.

Chouji stares at him for a long moment, before reaching out and pulling Riku into a bear hug.

“Thanks,” he mumbles into Riku’s shoulder, which has magically gone damp.

Riku hugs Chouji back. The other boy isn’t sobbing or anything, so Riku doesn’t try to rub his back or tell him everything’s alright; Riku himself only finds that sort of thing soothing if he’s _really_ upset, and maybe Chouji’s the same way.

Chouji gives _excellent_ hugs. Just tight enough to feel secure without being constricting or cutting off breath. Riku hasn’t _really_ gotten a hug since he left his mom, and if he takes an extra minute to appreciate this one, well, Chouji doesn’t seem to mind.

They don’t talk about it when Riku walks into the restroom to splash water on his face; Chouji even follows him, washing his face, hands, and the back of his neck. They don’t talk about it all the way back to their seats. The match ends about halfway through their return walk—Sasuke’s the victor, surprise surprise—and Riku doesn’t notice anything unusual until Chouji tugs him to the side, letting a _huge_ group of adults in what look like formal robes pass.

Each and every one of the adults has the same eyes as Neji.

“What was _that_ about?” Riku whispers to Chouji, once they’ve passed out of earshot.

“The Hyuuga clan,” Chouji whispers back. “Hinata’s the heir. They probably came to see how she did, since Neji’s the famous prodigy but he lost in the preliminaries.”

Riku makes a face. That sounds supremely awkward for Hinata, to now have to face her family with the weight of all those failed expectations. “Isn’t it rude for them to just leave, though?” No one else, as far as Riku’s noticed, has left after one of the matches. Presumably Shino and Shikamaru’s families are _also_ here, so, “What gives?”

Chouji shrugs. “They’re _Hyuuga_. They’re the biggest, strongest clan in Konoha these days. Yeah, it’s pretty rude, but… _I’m_ not gonna go say that to them.”

Huh. Riku should stop by Iruka’s classroom after school sometime and get more information on how the clans work here. He’s gotten the impression that manners are really important in Konoha, so there must be something about the intersection of manners and clan status/power that he’s missed, and Leviathan knows he can’t expect his uncle to fill him in. Chouji looks awkward with the topic, so Riku lets it drop as they get closer to their seats.

Neji has _not_ left, but Riku’s not about to comment on that. “Ino’s next, right?”

It’s Sakura’s turn to look like an anxious mess, but Riku’s not about to pull _her_ away from watching the match. The timing sucks right now, anyway: after this, regardless of the outcome, is Naruto versus Gaara, and he’s pretty sure if he tries to distract Sakura during _that_ , he’ll come away bloody. Then it’ll be Tenten against Sasuke, same problem.

Thinking about it like that, Riku’s suddenly very concerned for Sakura’s blood pressure in the next hour.

At some point during the previous matches, when Riku wasn’t paying attention, the arena got pretty chewed up. There are scorch marks along the walls, there’s just a hint of ozone when Riku cautiously lowers his scarf to check, and there are puddles of water, patches of wet dirt, and potholes of varying sizes scattered all over.

Ino and the other blonde girl from the lineup earlier jump down and face each other; the other girl has a huge fan on her back that, as soon as the match begins, she pulls off and sweeps in a wide arc toward Ino.

Ino dodges this and the next three follow-up attacks, keeping her distance. Periodically, she tosses a knife toward Temari, but the fan knocks all of these out of the air. After one attempt, Ino’s foot catches in a pothole and she goes down; the next sweep of Temari’s fan catches her and sends her flying backward, with Ino crossing her arms in front of her face just in time.

Then she lowers her arms and does _something_ with her hands, and Temari’s body jerks. Riku checks, but there are no shadows connecting the two of them.

“Okay, what did she just do?”

Sakura, grinning, answers, “This is _Ino’s_ family jutsu, the Mind Body Switch Technique. _She’s_ in control now, watch!”

Sure enough, Temari is now hitting herself with her fan, while Ino’s body slumps over. Riku frowns; that seems…unsafe, and like a weakness he wouldn’t really want to advertise to a whole bunch of foreign, potentially hostile, ninja.

Still, Ino seems to be winning, and she’s getting laughs out of the stadium audience as she does it. Sakura and Chouji both look a _lot_ more relaxed now than they had before. Riku even finds himself starting to relax.

And then Ino’s body twitches, just as Temari’s stills.

Sakura and Chouji instantly tense up, and from around the audience, Riku hears people shouting at Ino to get up, get away, watch out!

She tries, she obviously tries, but she’s too slow. Temari is _brutal_ in her beatdown, using first her folded-up fan and then her fists to keep Ino on the ground. Riku bites the inside of his cheek and counts the hits: _one, two, three, four, five, six…_

Three of them are to Ino’s head; one to her torso, two punches specifically to her gut. Ino throws up after one, and at this distance, Riku can’t tell if there’s blood too.

Temari reaches for her fan again, her fist in Ino’s shirt the only thing keeping the other girl off the ground, but then the proctor steps in. Temari’s snarl is apparent even where Riku’s sitting, but the proctor is backed up by a large guy who must be Mr. Asuma.

Temari drops Ino and walks away without a second look. Asuma picks his student up and disappears.

Riku elbows Sakura. “Will they let you into the nurse’s office?” It’s probably not called that—that’s what it’s called at _school_ , for crying out loud—but he can’t _think_ , he doesn’t know what else to say. “I’ll cheer Naruto on. You and Chouji should go check on Ino.”

Sakura looks torn, but Chouji is already up and barreling toward the back of the stadium; maybe there are other entrances, to get to the competitors? Riku can’t imagine they let just anybody in, but they’ll probably let in Chouji.

Lee’s the deciding voice. “Sakura, go. Your friend needs you. We will cheer on Naruto with all our hearts, but only _you_ can be there for Miss Ino!”

There are tears in Sakura’s eyes as she thanks him. There are tears in Lee’s eyes. There might even be tears in Riku’s eyes; he blinks, and Sakura’s gone, headed in the same direction as Chouji.

“And now, the _true_ competition starts,” Neji says. Riku gives him a dirty look, but to his credit, Sakura’s out of earshot when he says it.

“What do you mean?” Lee asks, but then the answer is obvious: Naruto and Gaara are on the field, and even _Riku_ can feel the chakra.

Naruto looks _pissed_.

“I didn’t think Chouji said Shino was friends with their group,” Riku says hesitantly, trying to puzzle out _why_ Naruto would be so angry.

Lee shakes his head, but it’s Neji who answers. “From my experience fighting him, that doesn’t matter. Naruto would react like this in any circumstance; Gaara could have harmed complete strangers, and Naruto would _still_ be upset on their behalf.” There’s a smile on Neji’s lips. “It is Gaara’s _attitude_ he finds upsetting. Whether that will be enough for him to prevail, we shall see.”

“It will! Naruto’s attitude is a righteous one, and he will overcome Gaara’s bloody sand!”

On the one hand, Riku’s not too sure of that; on the other, Naruto’s a good kid, and stubborn, and creative. Add righteous anger to that, and maybe it _is_ a winning combination.

The match starts with Naruto lecturing Gaara at top volume. Riku can’t actually make out the _words_ , but he can hear the tone, and the people closer to the arena must be able to hear, because instantly there’s muttering and quiet conversation. Gaara, if he responds, does so much more quietly, and multitasks by sending his sand after Naruto.

Naruto dodges, then creates something like twenty clones of himself, all of them pouncing on Gaara, all of them yelling at him.

“I still don’t know how he does that,” Lee says with a frown. “His clones are too solid. Even someone like me can tell that the technique he’s using is different than the normal one.”

“Someone like you?” Riku asks, not peeling his eyes away from where Naruto is physically pulling Gaara’s sand cocoon apart handful by handful, punch by punch, even as clone after clone suffers a spiky-sand death.

A pause, and then, “I have absolutely no talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu.”

 _That_ earns eye contact, but Lee himself is focused on Naruto. Another question for another day, then. Riku’s starting to get tired of those. This, at least, seems personal to Lee; Riku’s mostly just curious how Lee even got as far as the Chuunin Exams without those skills. He handed Riku his ass, sure, but Riku’s the next thing to untrained; surely, against trained ninjas, hand-to-hand by itself isn’t enough?

It’s not really Riku’s business, though. Maybe he’ll bring it up with Gai, and if he gets shut down, at least he won’t have upset Lee.

In the arena, Naruto seems to be screaming something at Gaara. His hands look like they’re _covered_ in blood, but Gaara’s cocoon is clearly busted open. Then Naruto backflips, lands on his feet, and pulls out a scroll.

What follows is a huge cloud of smoke, and then the _largest thing Riku has ever seen_. He can’t even tell what it _is_ , besides large and roundish, with Naruto on its head. He actually has to _look up to see Naruto_ right now, that’s how big the thing is.

Before he can process _that_ , though, there’s a commotion near the entrance. Riku blinks, shakes his head, and turns to see what the matter is. There’s some kind of outcry, people starting to stand up, but he can’t see _why_.

Lee and Neji both seem really focused on the fight, although Lee looks torn as soon as they hear people shouting out. “I’ll go check it out,” Riku volunteers, earning a grateful look from Lee.

Riku slips past them and starts pushing through the wall of bodies between him and the entrance. Most of the people in front of him part, letting him through, but a few push back, and a lot give him dirty looks or remarks. Nothing Riku hasn’t heard before, and he’s heard worse, so he ignores it all and concentrates on moving forward.

An explosion from the arena physically rocks the ground under his feet; he grabs onto the nearest chair, and feels at least two people grab his shoulders and arms to catch themselves. Before he can even try to turn and look, though, he processes what’s in front of him: no longer a wall of bodies, but instead, people slumped over, on top of chairs and steps and each other.

The handful of people between Riku and the bodies start to fall, and Riku has just enough time to catch the young woman in front of him and lower both of them into a chair, with her head pillowed safely on his shoulder, before unconsciousness steals his vision.

///

Riku’s been through wipeouts before. Sora’s mom and dad both used to surf semi-professionally—they had an utterly gag-worthy meet-cute at a competition, even—and every summer, they take the kids out and give lessons.

Riku is calm: panic is the worst thing to do in a wipeout. It’s the worst thing to do, _ever_. Panic kills people in shallow water, it kills people within sight of their friends, it kills people _stupidly_. Riku knows better than to panic.

He sinks to the floor. The ocean floor is calmer than the waves. Leviathan lives on the ocean floor; people who don’t know him, like Sora and Kairi, think that he’s a god of the waves, but he’s not just that. He’s also the god of the shallows and the deep, the currents and the undertow. That doesn’t mean he’ll save someone, but it means he gives his followers the tools to save themselves: the ocean near the floor is calm, not roiling, and once you’re there, you know which way to swim.

 _Up_.

The floor is beneath him, but he’s going headfirst and that’s all wrong; slowly, he tries to right himself, keeping his knees bent like he was always taught. It feels more like moving through wet sand than water, but he does get his knees under him and his feet on something solid, and carefully, braced against the sting of saltwater, he opens his eyes.

No sting, just a moment of disorientation in the darkness and then, from below: a glowing light, a sense of warmth beneath his feet that grows to encompass him. Leaves swirl around him, blown up off the floor and revealing stained glass lit from within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diiiiiiiive to the heeeeeeeart...
> 
> Yeah, this was always in the plan, from as soon as I realized I was gonna be sticking Riku in the stands during the exam _when everyone in the stands gets knocked out_.
> 
> Also, if anyone was disappointed by the lack of detail in the matches, a) sorry not sorry ( _six fight scenes in one chapter_ would've killed me) and b) I may do a side-story going into detail about them.
> 
> You can probably guess what Naruto's screaming at Gaara, but Hinata and Sasuke's match sort of goes like:
> 
> Hinata: whichever of us wins will face Naruto next. so I'm going to try my best!  
> Sasuke: ...  
> Hinata: Naruto has inspired me so much! I won't fail now!  
> Sasuke:  
> Hinata:  
> Sasuke: yeah no. _I'm_ fighting Naruto in the finals, and I'm kicking his ass.  
>  Hinata: look I learned a water jutsu specifically to fuck with you. :)  
> Sasuke: *torches half the arena*


	10. Reminder: "May your life be eventful" is a curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is in my notes as "dive to the heart + Konoha Crush." So, you know, whichever half of the crossover you're here for, there's something for you!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple things: first of all, HUGE WARNING FOR GRAPHIC VIOLENCE IN THIS CHAPTER. People get injured during the invasion! People get killed! Unlike in canon, our protagonist here does _not_ hunt down Gaara, so the alternative is. Staying in the village and seeing the immediate impact of the battle.
> 
> No major character death, no major injury to major characters; this is the first chapter with a handful of OCs, and some of them get messed up.
> 
> Second thing: I took a lot from the canonical dive to the heart from KH; I tweaked a couple things because Riku's context here is not Sora's context in KH1. I also made some executive decisions (headcanons) about the whole process, starting with the fact that it's not just Sora. (My guess is, the keyblade, when it's ready/there's some imminent danger, wants to get to know the wielder, and therefore initiates the dive to the heart.) If you're not familiar with KH, the purpose of the dive to the heart is to set what your skill progression will be and how you'll level up. And if you ever just start playing KH1 without understanding what's going on with that, you won't be told! You'll just. Wander through the game, influenced by this decision with these non-obvious consequences. Kinda like Riku here!

At first, Riku’s mind can’t really grasp what’s in front of him: it’s all shapes and light surrounded by an oppressive expanse of darkness. Then the shapes resolve into actual pictures, and he realizes that he’s looking at a stained-glass rendering of a man in head-to-toe armor, a strange spiked helmet on his head; in his hand is some kind of club.

Riku steps forward cautiously, but there’s no noise, no real texture or fragility under his sandals, and so he takes another step and gets a better view of the backdrop: weirdly-shaped pillars next to the armored man’s knee, and above that, a set of four circles, with three more partially covered up by the man. Inside the circles are traditional good-luck charms in blue and green, the one in the center circle alone in orange.

The man  _feels_ familiar, even though Riku is certain he’s never seen him before—he would remember that armor, that club. It’s definitely not native to Destiny Islands. The good-luck charms, though,  _are_ ; they’re traditional, and even in color-blocked silhouette, Riku recognizes them.

_So much to do_ _…_

An echo, the memory of a voice, something deep that resonates in Riku’s bones. He spins around, trying to locate the source, but finds nothing. He’s alone.

_Don’_ _t be afraid. So much time has been lost, but you can take yours now._

“Who are you?” he asks, feeling more than a little silly for shouting into the void. He feels even sillier when the voice ignores his question.

_The door is still shut._

There are no doors. Riku glances around, just to confirm, but still: no doors, shut or otherwise.

“Make some sense.”

Again, the voice seems to refuse to answer him. Or maybe this is a one-way communication: he can hear it, but it can’t hear him.  _Power sleeps within you. If you give it form, it will give you strength_.

_Choose well_.

A shaft of light falls, obscuring the visor of the armored man, and brightens until it’s painful to keep his eyes open. Riku raises an arm to shield his face, just in case, and doesn’t lower it until opening his eyes—safely, with his arm pressed against them—reveals normal lighting levels.

Lowering his arm, he sees three objects floating before him: a knife, a scroll, and a forehead-protector with a stylized heart in place of the Konoha leaf. Each one spins in place slowly, hanging just above eye-level in midair, three pedestals beneath them.

The knife is Konoha-style, with no cross-guard and no blunt edge. The scroll is like dozens of others that Riku has seen. The forehead-protector is almost identical to the one on his head—

—which isn’t there, when he raises his fingers to check. His scarf is gone, too, although he’s wearing the same clothes he put on this morning. His pockets are empty; the pouch at his thigh has nothing in it.

Empty-handed and feeling more vulnerable than he did a minute ago, he turns back to the floating objects.

The only choice he can see is between the objects, which implies some things. Maybe, before Sakura’s tutelage, Riku would rush in and grab up the knife, just to feel a comforting weight in his hand. Maybe, before  _Konoha_ , he wouldn’t think to consider his options  _before_ touching anything. Now, though, he knows better.

Knives are for hurting people, and ninja-style knives like the one in front of him don’t make any effort to hide that fact. You  _can_ use one to cut up meat, but you wouldn’t if you had any other alternative. That’s just not its function.

Scrolls are for learning. Riku can barely read them, but even he knows that. They’re like books, only usually smaller and more portable. You  _can_ use them for other things—Tenten clearly used one in her match to summon a whole ton of weapons, and Naruto had one, too—but their primary purpose is  _knowledge_.

The forehead-protector is, as its name suggests,  _protection_. Less protection than the helmet the armored man has, sure, but protection nonetheless. With the forehead-protectors, you know who your friends are, and you know who your enemies are; who you’re supposed to be helping, and who’s probably going to get in your way. They’re symbolic of identification, of  _belonging_.

So, if Riku’s gonna choose one over the others, which will it be? His ability to fight, to learn, or to fit in?

He’s leaning toward picking the forehead-protector, if just because he’s picked it once already, and he can still hear the Hokage’s words in his head:  _The core of yourself will remain strong, regardless of what you face. What is important to you, you will keep._

If Riku’s going to live by a single principle, something like  _teamwork_ or  _protecting his friends_ is one he can be happy with.

That decided, he steps up to the forehead-protector and reaches for it. It spins in a lazy circle just past his fingertips, making him climb onto the pedestal to grab hold.

_The path of the guardian_ , the voice intones.  _Kindness to aid friends. A symbol to guide all. Is this the path you seek?_

Riku yanks his hand back, slipping off the pedestal and reassessing. He’s right in his estimation of the forehead-protector, but he honestly never expected the voice to come out and  _tell him_ what each item symbolizes. That seems…a little too easy.

However, Sakura would beat him black and blue if she ever found out he had the option to learn everything and made his choice without all the information  _anyway_. So he heads over to the knife, pulls himself up onto the pedestal, and reaches for it.

_The path of the warrior. Unending confidence. A knife of terrible suffering. Is this the path you seek?_

Riku can’t pull away fast enough. The scroll, on the other hand, turns out to be:  _The path of the mystic. Inner strength. A scroll of wonder and ruin._

He wonders, if he picks the scroll, if he’ll be able to actually  _read_ any of it, or if that’s asking too much.

“The path I seek...” Riku mutters, eyeing the scroll. Inner strength doesn’t sound bad at all, but “wonder and ruin” is only a cut above “terrible suffering.”

Riku returns to his first choice: path of the guardian, kindness, guidance. “This is the path I want to walk,” he says as he takes hold of the forehead-protector.

_Your path is set_ , he hears, as the headband turns to light in his hand. When the light fades, his hand is empty.

Just to check, he raises his fingers to his forehead, even though he can feel that he’s still missing his headband.

_Now, what will you give up in exchange?_

This is unexpected: he thought he would lose  _both_ other paths by picking this one. To choose means he only gives up  _one_.

If he has to choose between sacrificing confidence or inner strength—“terrible suffering” or “wonder and ruin”—then the choice is simple. Riku goes straight to the knife, holding it in his hands and accepting that, at the beginning of the year, he would have made probably the exact opposite choice. Feeling the handle in his hand, though, helps ground him: yes, this is the correct course of action.

Maybe the Hokage is right and the core of a person doesn’t change, but Riku would like to think, over the past few months, he’s pruned away a lot of dead branches to reveal what his trunk  _actually_ is. That he would have clung to those branches just months ago doesn’t make that younger Riku an awful person, just young and untested. Inexperienced. Unprepared.

Riku’s still a lot of those, but…less, now, and improving every day.

_You give up this power?_

“Yeah.”

As the knife disappears in a burst of light, like the forehead-protector before it, the voice says,  _You_ _’ve chosen the path of the guardian. You’ve given up the path of the warrior. Is this the route you choose?_

“Stop second-guessing me.” Nothing happens, and Riku sighs. “ _Yes_. It’s the route I choose, whatever  _that_ means.” Paths and routes imply movement, progress, a destination.

The pedestals all lurch, and Riku flips backward off his before it merges into the floor. Then the floor begins shaking and collapsing from the outside of the platform towards the center.

“What the—” As the glass beneath his shoes splinters, he starts to fall—curls in on himself, arms around his head, anticipating the cuts those sharp shards will leave on the bare skin of his arms—and the darkness slips around him. None of the shards touch him. It’s like plunging into the ocean and finding an unexpected current: before Riku realizes it, he’s being tugged in a particular direction with no leverage or momentum to stop.

Another platform with the same armored person in stained glass floats into view, and Riku finally pulls in air when his feet touch the surface. He only stands around a moment before his hand grows warm.

Light shines from it, and though it fades quickly, his hand stays warm. When he raises his fingers to his temples, he finds the forehead-protector there.

It fits on his head just as well as the one Iruka gave him. Blindly, his fingers trace the strange symbol: a heart, only with extra curls instead of the top lines meeting neatly. He’s never seen that symbol before, but something about it  _feels_ right, the same way he  _felt_ like he knew the man pictured beneath his feet.

_You’_ _ve gained the will to fight. To protect yourself and others._

“If I have to,” Riku says, lowering his hand. It’s not that he would’ve refused, before; now he’s just more prepared for whatever might come his way. A month of training with Gai hasn’t put him anywhere near the same level as the genin competing today, but it has been good for  _some_ things.

_There will be times you have to fight._

Ominous, and timely: as he watches, globs of shadows ooze out of the floor, growing arms and legs, antennae, and glowing yellow eyes. They seem to radiate a sense of menace ( _killing intent_ , he hears in Sakura’s best authoritative tone,  _amateur ninja give themselves away with it; professionals can use it to catch you off guard. Strong killing intent can create a hallucination that you_ _’re actually being killed, and while it doesn’t last long, even a second can be all the opportunity a skilled ninja needs_ ). They also seem  _hungry_.

Riku scrambles into a guard position and blocks the first lunge. Mr. Gai never trained him for  _this_ , for facing multiple dog-sized opponents that can slip  _under_ his shoes to get behind him and attack his back.

He finds that he can punt them, though, and while punching isn’t very effective, most of their attacks are aimed at his face and torso. Arms up to block, legs ready for opportunities to kick, and attention constantly focused on where all the shadows are, just in case one tries to sneak past him. Judiciously, he uses the body flicker jutsu to get behind the shadows, or to get out from the middle of the mob.

He tries using the clone jutsu, but the shadows don’t go for the clone, just keep coming after him. If he had Naruto’s apparently-solid ones, he might be able to cut this down from a skirmish to a chore, but his is sadly incorporeal. (Maybe he can bribe Naruto with food in exchange for the solid clone jutsu.)

He spots a place behind his target shadow, forms the tiger seal, pours a dribble of chakra through his whole body, and  _poof_ , he’s hopping over the shadow or swinging around it to come at it from behind, all in an instant. He gets to the point, three or four shadows in, that his arm or his leg is already in motion when he starts to flicker, halfway through an attack that lands fractions of a second after he slows down.

This technique? This technique is  _badass_. Riku’s baffled that none of the ninja earlier used it. He stops slowing down for his attacks and it turns out that you can _punch something while body flickering_ , and all you’ve got to do is watch your momentum. (Riku does wind up doing an impromptu somersault like that, which he is  _never going to admit to Mr. Gai_ , because Mr. Gai will decide to make him do  _burpees_ while body-flickering until he’s totally, 100% in control of all his limbs at all times, under all circumstances.)

_Keep your light burning strong_ , the voice says as a shadow collapses into droplets of darkness under Riku’s foot. The darkness fades just as quickly as the light, and there’s nothing on his sandal when he checks it a minute later, after catching another shadow before its claws can rip into his chest.

After the last shadow fades into the glass, Riku doesn’t get even a second to catch his breath. The whole platform erupts in shadow—not the creatures, this time, but a wave of a thick, black liquid that pulls at Riku’s feet, his calves, his knees, until he stumbles into it, then falls.

“Hey—! Get off!”

It swallows him up.

It fills his open mouth—stupid to shout when there’s no one to hear him—his nose, his eyes. He can’t breathe around it, and he starts to hyperventilate despite himself. The darkness coats his ears, giving him the same distorted hearing that dunking his head underwater would. It pushes against his chest, where his lungs start to burn from lack of oxygen; his arms and legs are tense but trapped. Moving them is less like swimming and more like trying to dig himself out of packed, wet sand.

One moment, he thinks he’s about to pass out, and then the pressure evaporates, quick as water on a hot day. He gasps in one breath, then two, three, four, nearly choking on the air; he falls to his hands and knees and doesn’t even try to open his eyes until his breathing is even again.

There’s no point in overwhelming himself, after all: he can clearly hear that he’s in a room, not the stadium or the weird glass platform. There are no weird echoes, no other voices, just a breeze, someone writing, someone else handling a scroll, and a third person exercising, from the tempo of their breaths.

He’s kneeling in Iruka’s classroom. Directly in front of him: Sakura, head bent over a scroll that she unrolls, then rolls closed, then unrolls again. Behind him and to the side, when he turns and looks over his shoulder: Iruka, at his desk, writing on a scroll of his own. To the side: Mr. Gai, doing push-ups underneath the open window, not counting them off like usual. From the sun, it’s mid-morning, but the grounds outside are devoid of life.

_The door is still shut_ , the voice says again.  _You still have time. Hold on._

There ought to be a door, but it isn’t there. Riku stares at the place it should be: there’s a painting of a giant wave swamping a boat, with what looks like a mountain in the distance.

_Tell me more about yourself._

Riku glances around the room again, but the other three people here give no sign of having heard the voice—or, in fact, of noticing Riku or one another. Mr. Gai, at the very least, should have said something by now. He’s never known Sakura to need  _that_ much time to read a scroll, either.

Illusion? Has he been in an illusion this whole time? If he has, how can he break it?  _Can_ he, even? And what’s the point? If this is an enemy attack, this seems like a really weird way to gather intelligence.

Wary now, Riku approaches Iruka. There’s no way it’s the  _real_ Iruka, but maybe he can figure out what the point of all of this is based on what the fake-Iruka says. Before he can decide whether he’s going to ask the man something—and  _what_ —or just tap him on the shoulder, Iruka looks up at him and asks, “What’s most important to you?”

Is this a trap? Riku narrows his eyes. Is this a ploy to get him to reveal his weaknesses? Maybe that’s what the choice earlier was, too. Even as the idea crosses his mind, though, something deeper than rational thought dismisses it. No, it’s more than that: it’s like his gut, the blood in his veins, and the marrow in his bones all reject the idea that anything here is trying to hurt him.

A little weird, because he’s very sure that the shadows-with-claws _could_ have hurt him, but he pauses for a moment and tries, instead of thinking, to  _feel_ his reaction to that thought.

He still feels like he’s safe.

Very weird. Possibly a trap, but if it is, he’s not sure how to spring himself out of it when half of  _himself_ is utterly sure that nothing’s wrong.

Everything in the room is calm; it feels peaceful. Even loud, exuberant Mr. Gai seems thoughtful right now—but not out of place, like it’s someone using the illusion technique. Mr. Gai  _can_ be both quiet and thoughtful, especially when he’s teaching Riku and making sure that Riku’s doing everything correctly and isn’t about to injure himself. What Mr. Gai isn’t capable of, though, is this level of indifference. Even when they were strangers, Mr. Gai didn’t  _ignore_ Riku.

What’s most important to him? That’s obvious, and even if this is a trap (it’s not a trap, he  _knows_ it’s not a trap), he’s not sure how an enemy coming after  _him_ could miss the answer. “My friends.”

Iruka looks at him blankly. “Is friendship worth so much?”

That’s how he  _knows_ it’s not Iruka. The real Iruka would smile and say something profound about how the village was built on teamwork; Mr. Gai would undoubtedly add onto that sentiment, too.

Iruka stops talking and goes back to writing on his scroll. Riku glances at it, but his eyes seem to slide off the characters, like his brain registers that Iruka  _is_ writing (and not writing something in the alphabet  _Riku_ grew up using) but can’t process anything beyond that.

Very, very strange.

Riku goes to Sakura next. Before he can get a look at  _her_ scroll, just to see if the same thing happens, she looks up at him and asks, “Why do you want to be a ninja?”

Less easy, less obvious, and potentially far more dangerous than the last question. Riku considers his options: “I don’t, actually,” has an uncomfortable weight to it, like it might drag him down a lot more than he’d like; “to help people” doesn’t seem to weigh  _enough_ though, too simplistic for him to offer to Sakura. After all, hadn’t she shared with him her own journey to answer that question? This isn’t the  _real_ Sakura, but he isn’t comfortable giving her an answer less honest than the one she gave him.

“I don’t want to be the kind of person who can abandon his friends and break his promises.” One day, he’ll be able to say that he’s the kind of person who sticks by his friends and keeps his promises, but…he’s not there yet.

“That’s your best answer?” she asks, although there’s no sarcasm in her tone and no judgment in her gaze. She turns back to her scroll, and just like Iruka’s, he can’t read it; he also notices what should have registered earlier: she doesn’t  _smell_ like Sakura. Iruka and Mr. Gai don’t smell like themselves, either, and the room doesn’t smell like Iruka’s classroom. All the odors, pleasant and not, are totally absent.

Is this what the world is like for other people? Or would even a normal person—say, the actual Sakura—think that this lack is weird, too? Surely even weak noses can pick up  _some_ scents, and the absence of them would be disturbing…

With a sigh, he walks over to where Mr. Gai is still doing push-ups. The blankness of his face is possibly even more off-putting than the lack of his scent—which is possibly the  _best_ scent Riku has ever encountered, all fire pits on the beach and rolling around on the grass and sizzling fish. Abruptly, he misses it.

“What are you afraid of?” Mr. Gai asks, head tilting and eyes rising to meet Riku’s.

That’s another easy answer. “Hurting the people I care about.”

“Is that really the scariest thing?” he asks, and lowers his gaze and his head.

Riku, helplessly, turns the question over in his mind, wondering if there’s something worse that just didn’t occur to him. Iruka and Sakura’s—well,  _fake_ Iruka and Sakura’s—doubts didn’t unsettle him, but coming from Mr. Gai… He resolves to talk to the man about his fear at the first opportunity, even if just to hear a more authentic answer.

Gai, the  _real_ Gai, will have a better response. Riku’s sure of it. He’s also sure that he  _needs_ to hear it, whatever it is.

The voice comes back.  _You want friendship. You do not want to abandon your friends and break your promises. You_ _’re afraid of hurting the people you care about._

Throw in the bit earlier about the path of the guardian, and Riku’s starting to sense a theme. He’s always been protective—half a dozen potential bullies could attest to that—but he thinks there’s something in the water in Konoha. Maybe it’s just how supportive Sakura’s been, and all the lessons and lectures about teamwork that Iruka’s given him.

Gai is basically a walking advertisement for “help others!” Hell, he’d known Riku for barely ten  _minutes_ and he’d agreed to take responsibility for Riku’s training for a whole  _month_. Now that Riku knows Gai better, he’s nearly certain that Kakashi didn’t have to bribe or threaten him at all. He could’ve just walked past the man and commented that Riku’s taijutsu needed work, and Gai would’ve shown up at his apartment, ready to help.

_Your adventure begins at nightfall,_ the voice says.  _It may take you a while to find your footing, but once you do, your path will be sure._

That sounds like a summary of the past month, for sure.

The room noticeably lightens, from no discernible source. It’s like everything around him suddenly starts to glow, and while the brightness is bearable at first, after just a few seconds, Riku’s forced to close his eyes. He brings up an arm to shield them, but that doesn’t help. His eyes burn a little, vision a wash of red as his eyelids try and fail to block the light out.

_You are not ready now. The door is not yet open. Wait, Riku. Become ready._

He wakes with a gasp, body jerking upright. There’s a weird weight in his hand, and the woman he caught is still draped over him. She nearly goes tumbling to the cement before he catches her once more. He tries shaking her awake, even tries shouting at her, to no avail. With a sigh, he trades spots, leaving her lying on the seat, and stands with a groan.

One elbow twinges from where it was jammed into the corner of the bench, and his neck is stiff and sore. The thing in his hand is metal, sort of staff-like, and he definitely wasn’t holding it when he went down.

Wary, he looks around: there’s fighting in the next section, at speeds that make him a little nauseous to watch. There seems to be a fight in the arena, too. Around him, though, is relative calm. A lot of collapsed bodies, some with weapons out, but no indication of who might have put a staff in Riku’s hand.

The thing, on closer inspection, might be a relative of a sword: there’s a hilt and a guard, anyway, followed by a shaft with an oversized throwing star attached to the top like a Christmas tree topper. It’s longer than the wooden sword he played with on the Islands, but closer in length to a fish-spear than the polearm Tenten used against Shikamaru.

It weighs no more than his sword, which is…unbelievable, considering that the throwing star looks like metal, same as the smaller ones in Riku’s pouch, while the shaft is pearl, off-white with blue and pink highlights. The guard looks like  _silver wire_ , but feels like steel to Riku’s touch.

The star’s edges are all sharp. So are the points.

The weapon doesn’t  _smell_ like any kind of metal he’s ever been around. He pulls his scarf down with his free hand to check, and yep: it smells like a  _plant_ , like the small, broad-leafed ones that grow on the play island, with big pink flowers that Kairi loves to pluck and put in her hair, in vases, in scrapbooks, and down the back of Sora’s shirt.

He smiles just thinking about it.

The guard looks delicate, all intricate leaf and vine patterns. He pulls out a knife and tests the strength of the metal; it doesn’t give at all, and further, all those leaves and twining vines mean that there’s no room for anything but the thinnest blade to get through.

Turning his attention to the hilt, he frowns as he notices the more porous texture. It looks just like the shaft, but his grip doesn’t slide, and probably won’t even if he sweats.

Dangling from the pommel is a chain, just as delicate-looking as the guard, ending in a pearl.

It’s pretty, he decides, but he has no idea where it came from or who it belongs to, and he has  _priorities_. He needs to get back to Lee and Neji, or find Sakura and Chouji, or—anyone he knows, really. So he sets down the weapon and, cautiously, stretches, leery of aggravating anything. He doesn’t notice any bruises or worse, though, just general stiffness.

His forehead-protector has a leaf on it; there are knives in the pouch on his thigh. His scarf is still wrapped securely around his mouth and nose, still tucked into his shirt. Besides the weapon that is now laying, looking somehow offended, on the bench in front of him, nothing seems too far out of place.

Besides the weapon and, of course, the whole host of unconscious people who really should not be unconscious.

A flash of light, and when he looks down, the weapon’s gone. He stares, but can’t spare any longer wondering about it. He’s wasted too much time on it already, really, and he can’t stop himself from body-flickering rather than walking or running back to his seat.

There are bodies—still breathing, thankfully, and no one seems to have cracked their skull when they fell—which Riku hops over. Too many for him to try to wake them all up. He can help these others once he gets to Neji and Lee. Those two will have some idea of how he can actually, usefully help, provided he can wake them up.

They’re already awake when he gets to them, and he can see others also standing up or otherwise stirring. There’s no sign of Chouji or Sakura, though, and there’s a stranger all in white with one glowing hand held up to Lee’s forehead.

“Hatake,” Neji says, drawing everyone’s attention. The veins around his eyes are bulging, and he looks…uncertain. Disturbed, maybe. Upset is too strong a word for the expression on his face. “You woke up on your own?”

“Yeah, a minute ago.” He pauses, debates with himself. Decides the forehead-protector they’re all wearing means something to him. “I had a really weird dream. You?”

Neji shakes his head, and the stranger turns away from Lee to advance on Riku. Face-to-face, she looks at least as old as Iruka, and her brows are furrowed.

“Did you hit your head? Are you hurt?” While she speaks, she raises a hand in front of his eyes. “Track my finger, but don’t move your head.”

He follows her finger with just his eyes. “No and no. I didn’t see anyone else hurt, either—besides being unconscious, anyway. Lee, do you know where Sakura and Chouji are?”

“I am certain they made it to the infirmary before the attack,” Lee says, raising a fist like a promise in Riku’s peripheral. “The medic-nin there will make sure they are fine!”

Medic-nin. Medical ninja? Is that what the white clothing means? The woman lowers her hand and steps back, surveying all three boys with a critical look on her face.

“We’ve been invaded,” she says. “Sand and Sound have gone back on their treaties. This,” she gestures to the stadium, “is the result of a large-scale genjutsu attack, aimed at debilitating our forces. All ninja who can mobilize are encouraged to meet up with their teams and coordinate with the defending forces. Who is your team leader?”

Lee and Neji exchange a glance and open their mouths at the same time, but Neji beats Lee. “Rock Lee is temporary leader, until we can rendezvous with our jounin-supervisor. Hatake has not been assigned a team yet.”

The other nin bows her head. When she straightens, her face might as well be a mask; he can’t read her expression at all. “Very well. You two, attempt to rendezvous with your supervisor. If that’s not possible, join the defense forces. Genin Hatake…?”

“Hatake Riku.”

She nods. “Hatake, come with me. We can use every pair of hands we can get.” Then, back to Neji and Lee, she says, “Dismissed!”

The two are off, probably toward…wherever the competitors are, when they aren’t in the arena. The stranger starts walking, and as Riku falls into step behind her, he murmurs a quick prayer to Valefor:  _Wind watch over them and guide them on their way._ So far out from the ocean, he feels weird asking Leviathan to intervene, so even though Valefor’s not his  _primary_ god, he reaches out to her anyway. He’s gone to services a few times and given sacrifices to be polite while he was there. It’s anyone’s guess whether that would be enough to drag her attention all the way to another world, and even chancier that she’d bother to watch over two people who don’t even know her name…

But Riku feels better after he’s done it.

“I don’t know your name,” he tells the other nin when he’s done. She’s leading him toward the arena, stopping only to examine every singleperson with a forehead-protector they come across. Lone genin and chuunin, she sends to the hospital, while she directs teams to the defense forces.

“You may call me Hayashi.”

First name, or family name? Probably family name. Medic-nin Hayashi has her black hair pulled back in a braid that wraps around her head and the kind of no-nonsense attitude that Riku’s mother always called “a natural schoolteacher.”

None of the ninja they come across are jounin, and there are only a couple chuunin. After the eighth person she stops at, he asks about that.

“A jounin would be able to counter this genjutsu,” she explains. “If not immediately, then soon after. And jounin know where to report in this sort of emergency. Chuunin may or may not, depending on their experience.”

“Oh. Does that mean you’re a jounin? Since you’re telling everyone else where to go.”

She snorts. “No. I’m a chuunin and a medic-nin.”

He blinks. They stop, and he watches as she wakes up a team of genin: the four kids look a little older than Riku, and they’re all in a pile. She starts at the top, and when she’s done, she’s sent them all to the Academy.

“How do you know where to send people? Did someone tell you?”

“No.” She turns around, staring down at him. “You are a ninja of Konoha. You are a Leaf. This is a crisis situation; those who can’t take initiative should just turn in their plates.” She lifts one hand to flick the metal of his forehead-protector. “Initiative is something that all ninja need to learn, and learn early. If you’re on a mission and everything collapses around you, you  _need_ to be able to think for yourself. Otherwise, you’re a liability.”

Then she turns back around and continues on her way. Riku follows, a few steps behind, thinking.

This is a bit like Kakashi’s test on his first day in Konoha. She isn’t going to tell him what he has to do, he realizes.

(She’s not doing this to any of the other genin, though. She’s just sending them away; he isn’t sure if it’s because she trusts him less or what.)

“How can I help?” he asks.

She doesn’t smile at him, but the look she gives him isn’t unfriendly, either. “Do you know how to break a genjutsu?”

He shakes his head.

“Then you probably won’t know chakra transfer… Oh well. Give me your hand.”

He extends it.

She takes it, closes her eyes, and says, “Don’t fight me.”

For one heartbeat, two heartbeats, nothing happens. Then she  _pulls_ something out of Riku. Instinctively, he jerks away, but she digs her fingernails into the back of his hand. He stills.

Another beat, and she lets go. “You have unusually low reserves,” she tells him. “After this row, we’re heading to the main street. If another medic-nin asks to borrow chakra, tell them that; it’s no use healing people if it puts someone else in the hospital for preventable chakra exhaustion, and you can give _maybe_ two or three more times before that’s you.”

“What about the rest of the people here?” They’ve barely covered a fraction of the stadium, and she’s left an awful lot of people just laying around, vulnerable.

“The battles nearby,” she gestures to the high-speed attacks in the section, then the arena, “make it unsafe to wake up civilians. They’ll panic and be slaughtered. Waking up anybody too close to the battles would be equally unsafe. But there are also battles being fought outside, and aiding our forces there may tip the balance and prevent more loss of life.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re not squeamish around blood and injuries, are you? No sympathetic pain, triggers, anything like that?”

He shakes his head on reflex, before it occurs to him that he hasn’t been  _around_ a whole lot of blood since he broke Sora’s arm.

“Good. Come on.”

Hayashi stops to wake a few more people up, and then she leads him through a set of doors and into a series of halls. As soon as she opens those doors, Riku’s glad for the scarf: he can smell blood and something antiseptic, but it’s not overwhelming. Unpleasant, but not debilitating.

Shouts echo throughout the halls. Hayashi ignores them. Riku tries to; the panicked ones are bad, but even worse is sudden silence, especially following any kind of explosion.

She tells him quietly, “These halls were designed to let sound carry.”

Does it make a difference, how close the battles are? Could he  _do_ anything if they were close?

Finally, she leads him up what must be a back set of stairs. The sounds and smells from the hall taper off as they climb. Two flights down, Hayashi doesn’t so much  _open_ the door as she  _kicks it in_.

“What,” Riku says.

“Quicker than unlocking it,” is the explanation. “Come on.”

The door leads to an alley; when they get out of that, Riku realizes they’re on the other side of the stadium. It feels like they should be further away, after the journey through the antiseptic, echoing halls.

“You could head to the Academy,” she tells him as they walk. “The forces there could use a hand.  _I_ am heading for the front lines, and I could also use a hand.” She doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t even ask a real question, but he gets it.

He doesn’t even have to think. Go to the Academy where he can maybe find someone he knows, or stay with someone who thinks he can help? Not to mention he’ll have to remember  _how_ to get to the Academy from here, and then he’ll have to actually  _get there_ in one piece when there are apparently battles nearby.  _Ninja_ battles.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Then keep up.” She takes off, and he’s hard-pressed to follow her without body-flickering.

The “front lines” seem to be  _everywhere_ ; Hayashi stops every time there’s a body leaned against a building or lying in the road. Sometimes, those bodies are still moving, still breathing. Most of them aren’t.

It’s not just blood, out here. There’s dirt, ash, gunpowder, and oil, especially accompanied by scorch marks and smoke; there’s bodily odors that Riku doesn’t want to think too much about. Bad enough that the second body they come across basically shows him what intestines look like outside the body, but to  _smell_ them, as well as every other smell a body emits when it’s dead or dying…

The fourth body they come across is slumped over a bench, shuddering. Hayashi shifts it—him—and then recoils.

Sand symbol on the forehead-protector. Riku almost doesn’t notice, the smell of puke enough to make  _him_ want to throw up, but as soon as he sees it, he knows what Hayashi will do.

He squeezes his eyes shut, flinching at the last gurgle, the sudden wash of iron-scent. When he opens his eyes, Hayashi’s looking at him, an odd expression on her face.

“Face away next time,” she says. “Someone could come up behind me.”

Riku nods, carefully not looking at the Sand-nin.

He manages a few steps before it’s too much. He barely gets the scarf pushed down before he loses his breakfast. Hayashi waits, saying nothing.

The real “front lines” come a few blocks later, where a group of Leaf-nins have pulled together a barricade, holding it against a group of Sound-nins. They have one medic-nin already, dressed in a green vest and pants like Kakashi or Iruka. The only reason Riku knows he’s a medic-nin is the glowing hand pressed to the bloody side of one of the others.

As they approach, Hayashi yanks on his shoulder, bending him sharply forward as they move. A few throwing stars and knives still come their way, but he manages to deflect the only one that gets close to hitting him. Hayashi just dodges hers and pulls him along.

While she volunteers their names to the jounin in charge, Riku’s attention goes to the medic-nin. The other man’s bleeding has stopped. The jounin eyes Riku, but apparently takes the “genin” part more seriously than his family name. Riku barely notices.

“He’s fresh, with some chakra reserves to transfer from, and he’s got both hands,” Hayashi finishes, which leads to Riku being shoved down between her and the other medic-nin and told not to move unless and until he feels like he’s about to faint.

“I have knives,” he says, after the no-longer-wounded nin, a kid who can’t be more than three or four years older than Riku despite his chuunin vest, complains about running low.

“Keep them,” the medic-nin says. He hasn’t volunteered his name, and Riku isn’t about to ask in the middle of a battle. “You might need them.”

“Cover me,” a second chuunin tells the whole group. She’s maybe a bit older than Hayashi, with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Lacking names, Riku decides that Kid-nin is the one running low on knives, while Ponytail is the one now sprinting out from behind the barricade. Riku wants to get up, to track her progress, but Hayashi’s hand falls on his shoulder before he can do more than twitch.

Judging by the lack of cursing, he guesses Ponytail makes it.

“What’s she doing out there?” he asks Hayashi.

“Bomb,” is the quick answer, followed shortly by the event itself.

Riku’s head is still ducked down—an instinctive flinch because of the noise, since he’s too far away to get caught in the blast and his scarf blocks out some of the gunpowder-and-blood smell—when the jounin shouts, “Ueda, Maki, retrieve!” Beard and Tattoo—Riku’s not sure which is which, but they’re both chuunin—dart out, returning a tense, expectant twenty-three seconds later with a screaming Ponytail.

Covered in dust and ash, Ponytail cradles her bloody hand. Beard drags her over to the medic-nins, and Riku helps lay her down, keeping an eye out for any attacks.

That hand is  _really_ messed up. Hayashi starts cleaning it while the medic-nin tsks. “Didn’t let go quick enough,” he says under his breath, and Riku winces at all the images  _that_ conjures up.

He tries not to look, but she’s right there, bleeding and screaming. Hayashi doesn’t even try to heal the hand; instead, she tells Riku to help the medic-nin while she scans the other two.

The medic-nin sucks chakra out of Riku and uses it to get the bleeding to stop. Tattoo offers a piece of leather, which Ponytail takes with her good hand and bites down on. It seems to help, but every line of her body still screams  _pain_.

Not all her fingers are still there. The thumb and forefinger are totally gone; the middle finger is just a stub. The other two, still there, clench and release as she screams uselessly into the leather.

There’s blood and ash and dirt on her face. There’s snot and tears, too.

The medic-nin manages to get the wound sealed, and Ponytail moves between him and Riku. She still has chakra, and with her dominant hand injured, she won’t find much use for it herself.

“I can still help,” she says. “Let me.”

“Incoming!” Beard shouts, seconds before a smoke bomb explodes just above the barricade. Riku’s vision is clogged grey, and he breathes shallowly through the scarf. His eyes water, but not enough for there to be anything creative in the bomb besides the smoke.

Standing, he shifts to put his back against Ponytail’s. As he moves, he unsheathes his grandfather’s gift, the longer knife that he’s practiced with, that he fought Tenten with, that has more reach than the Konoha knives. It’s comfortable in his hand, warm and heavy, and the hilt doesn’t slip in his palm despite the flop sweat breaking out all over him.

He swallows, straining his eyes against the smoke. Will it fade before the Sound-nin attack? Will he have to stab someone?  _Can_ he stab someone—not someone defenseless, like the Sand-nin Hayashi murdered earlier, but someone trying to kill him, or the woman behind him?

Every single jutsu he knows leaves his head. He has no conscious memory of ever even learning a move.

There’s a knife in his hand, though, and his body is in a stance that Gai has drilled him on extensively: feet apart, shoulders loose, ready to move in any direction he may need to go. Behind him, he can feel the muscles in Ponytail’s back shift. Her hair tickles the back of his neck.

Nearby sounds seem claustrophobically close: clang of steel, grunts, bitten-off curses; thud of blade meeting padding, thud of blade meeting flesh. A sharp, high moan, followed by a whoop.

The smoke clears. Beard is bleeding; Riku can’t smell it around the smoke and the scarf. Ponytail slumps behind him—how did  _she_ get hit without him noticing? He turns to look at her.

“I’m fine,” she says, smiling with obvious effort as she flops down. “Just...tired.”

“Aren’t we all?” the medic-nin mutters. He’s unhurt as well. A moment later, he calls out, “Everyone okay?”

Tattoo (a blue whorl on each of his cheeks) and the jounin sound off their status. Around them are the rest of the Sound-nins, at least five or six bodies littered in the space between the barricade and the medics. The jounin has a scratch that Hayashi pronounces “probably not poisoned” before she moves on to Beard, while Tattoo bleeds from his left ear.

“This is more complicated,” the medic-nin says. “I can’t just heal this; your eardrum might need to be regrown. Can someone take him to the hospital?”

The jounin surveys the group. Riku glances around: Ponytail, one hand useless, looks like she could use some rest in a hospital bed herself, but won’t be much help on the way there; Beard and Kid-nin are still okay, though, and so are Hayashi herself, the jounin, and Riku.

“Hatake,” the jounin finally says, “you take Maki and Kato to the hospital.”

Riku nods. He offers Ponytail—must be Kato—a hand up. He tries to fix her face in his memory, and then sweeps a glance over the others: Ueda, with his intricately-shaved beard; Maki, some blood smeared over one blue cheek; Hayashi, white clothes now stained and splattered in predominantly blood and ash with brown, yellow, and green accents.

Kid-nin has black, obviously gelled, spiky hair and a scar across his forehead old enough to have turned white (and his forehead-protector, wrapped around his left bicep, is probably how he  _got_ that scar). The jounin has her brown hair cropped short and the sort of serious air that you want someone to have in a crisis like this. The medic-nin has enough laugh-lines on either side of his warm brown eyes for Riku to guess that he’s normally not so detached.

Riku doesn’t know half their names. Once he leaves, he may never be able to track them down, may never find out what happens to them.

Kato takes his hand with her good one. She pulls out a knife once she’s on her feet. Maki’s similarly armed, and neither of them speaks a word to Riku as they head toward the hospital. (Riku only barely remembers where that is, but when he hesitates at a crossroad, Maki or Kato start moving in one direction or the other. Otherwise, he’s in the lead, as the least-injured team member.)

They keep a slow pace, to accommodate Maki’s skewed balance and Kato’s need to stop and catch her breath. Riku opens his mouth to offer to help, but Maki just shakes his head and keeps moving forward, jaw clenched as if he can sort it out himself through sheer determination.

To his credit, he doesn’t stumble very often, and when he does, he doesn’t fall.

The walk is quiet, tense, and uneventful; they hear fighting every few minutes, but the closest they come to it is a two-person battle on a nearby rooftop. Even that ends before they can help, Leaf-nin managing to take down the Sand-nin when they’re still several buildings away. The Sand-nin’s body slumps, then topples from the roof and onto the ground right in front of someone’s front door. Riku winces and hopes that whoever lives there is safe inside, and that someone will take care of that body before the resident comes out and sees it.

When he looks back up at the Leaf-nin, he finally notices the mask. ANBU, Riku remembers, like the Hokage’s bodyguards, when Naruto took him to see the old man. The ANBU nods at the group on the ground, then disappears.

Who knows where Naruto is now. Hopefully with Sakura, and Sasuke, and Kakashi. Hopefully looking after one another. Hopefully  _not_ running headfirst into the worst of the fighting, which only a small part of Riku has the focus to be worried about.

The hospital, when they arrive, is  _packed_. Several yards out from the entrance is a barricade, easily eight feet high, with over a dozen grim-faced guards. Some of them are younger than Riku. Some of them don’t have forehead-protectors anywhere that Riku can see.

Inside, the first room is full of people laying across multiple chairs, people on benches, people on the floor. The scarf blocks out the worst of the smells, but at this distance, Riku can still pick up vomit, blood, other bodily fluids, ash, gunpowder, and burnt flesh. He pauses, unsure, just over the threshold and a step to the side. Kato and Maki pass him.

A medic-nin—outfit now more rust than white—says, “If you’re not about to die, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she leaves the room. Riku frowns after her.

“Where’d she go?” he asks, glancing at Kato and Maki. Sure, they aren’t about to fall over, but Maki’s ear is still bleeding, and Kato’s hand…probably won’t ever be completely healed, not unless ninjas have some way of regrowing fingers, but it can probably get a lot  _worse_ if it’s not treated.

Neither of them answers, but a second medic-nin to his left does. “To get a chakra boost,” she says. She has a glowing hand on the shoulder of the woman next to her; as Riku watches, that shoulder goes from looking like a butcher’s cut to almost as good as new. “Most of us are almost completely out, and we’re running low on soldier pills.”

“Hatake here has reserves,” Kato tells her, “and so do I.”

Riku doesn’t wait, just offers up his hand to woman. If this is the only thing he’s going to be good for today, then he can at least work on that  _initiative_ Hayashi talked about.

The medic takes Riku’s hand in her own. (He made a face at the blood on it.) Like with Hayashi and the medic-nin back at the barricade, he can feel her suck chakra out of him. He’s starting to get a better sense of his chakra even when it’s  _not_ being tugged out, too—not enough to be totally sure, but he thinks he recovered a good portion just on the walk over here.

“Huh,” the medic-nin says. “Your reserves are low, but I can work with it. I’ll look at one of you now, and my colleague can help the other when she gets back…”

That settles Kato and Maki—both immediately volunteer the other, then scowl at each other. Riku moves away from them and the medic-nin, since there isn’t anything wrong with him.

The woman with the wounded shoulder vacated her seat once she was healed, and now there’s another woman in it, this one holding her arm together. Riku feels faint for a moment, blood overwhelming his nose suddenly, but a shake of the head and several deep-breathing exercises later, he’s able to glance around for another medic-nin.

They all seem busy. The one who left isn’t back yet, and the other one’s in the middle of fixing Maki’s ear. Riku walks over to the woman with the broken arm and asks, “Can I help?”

“You a medic-nin?”

He shakes his head. “Just a genin.”

“Got water?”

That’s another no, and she seems to be done with him after that. Biting back a sigh, he looks around.

Being a genin  _sucks_. He doesn’t want to go outside; he’s  _lucky_ he hasn’t gotten hurt, like all the people in here. He’s keeping his promise to Kairi, but part of him is all knotted up when he looks around at everyone who wasn’t as lucky.

He doesn’t know enough, isn’t strong enough, isn’t skilled enough, doesn’t have any experience. Outside is a battleground, like in storybooks, but if he goes out there, he’ll get hurt. He won’t do any good; all he can be is a battery for other people. A chakra battery. If he stays here, though, he  _still_ can’t do any good, because he isn’t a medic-nin. Even being a battery isn’t good enough; he doesn’t have enough in him.

It’s infuriating.

Still, he doesn’t give up. He keeps out of the way and keeps asking if he can help. Mostly, he gets told no, but when he asks right as a medic-nin walks over, the medic-nin shows him how to tie a bandage. From there, he’s directed him to another large room, where a bunch of people not in the medic uniform do nothing but bandage up wounded ninja and the odd civilian.

Riku has the whole process demonstrated to him as soon as he walks in and one of the volunteers realizes that  _he_ isn’t bleeding. It starts when the patient enters the room: if they can walk and sit, great, he can wave them over and sit them down in the chair in front of him. If they can’t, he gets up and takes them from the medic-nin at the door. If he feels recharged, he offers the medic-nin his reserves; if he doesn’t, he gets the patient’s arm draped over his shoulder. No one comes in here if they’re bad enough to need to be carried.

It’s slow, stumbling steps to his little two-table workstation, where he lays them down—gently, as gently as he can manage—on the larger table. The smaller table to his right has a pile of clean rags and a bucket of clean water.

First things first, he washes the wound off. All wounds look bad after they’d been left bleeding for long enough, and it isn’t like the hospital is all that close to the front lines.

Then he pulls out a roll of bandages, wraps the wound in several layers, cuts the bandages, and ties it closed. There aren’t enough medical supplies to put anything antibacterial or numbing on it, not if the person can mostly stand on their own two feet.

As soon as Riku’s done with his patient, he either directs or helps them to the exit. Then he wipes down his workstation with a rag out of a separate, strongly bleach-smelling bucket. By the time he’s ready, there’s inevitably another patient at the door: the supply of them seems endless, and it’s just him and about seventeen or so other genin in here.

The only patients they get are the ones with cuts, slices—all nonfatal, most not that serious. Nothing major, like Kato’s hand, or potentially sensitive, like Maki’s ear. All the patients are conscious, and none of them have any other injuries. The ones who aren’t civilians and walk in and out on their own probably go right back out to battle.

Sometimes, though, people come through the door who aren’t injured, or they stay after they’re taken care of. Riku’s self-appointed mentor tells him to keep an eye out and show those people the ropes; the room’s large enough that there’s plenty of space for more volunteers, they just have to be shown what to do.

Riku ends up demonstrating for three others: one guy twice Riku’s age who doesn’t even have a forehead-protector and two girls, the first with what looks like a broken nose and just-starting-to-swell black eyes and the second who looks like someone took Selphie and then smacked all the silliness and happiness out of her.

The smell of blood hangs over the whole room. Only slightly less prevalent is the physical presence of the blood, on the patients, on the volunteers, on everyone’s clothes and the chairs. No one seems that concerned about it, besides making sure that a volunteer’s hands and table are clean.

A couple volunteers with more energy than Riku can muster up fetch buckets of water and clean rags, somehow not slipping over the blood on the floor. When there’s a lull, a couple of them dart around with mops or rags to clean up the worst of it, but otherwise, everyone just works around the pools and drips. When Riku has to help a patient from the door, he’s careful about where he puts his feet; otherwise, he stays planted at his workstation.

Compared to the one battle he’s been through, his situation now is busy but not nerve-wracking. There’s always something to do, and he can’t be slow about it, but he doesn’t have to rush. No one sent to this room will bleed out in the next few minutes, so there’s time to do things correctly.

That also leaves him some time to take stock of himself, especially with the quiet patients. He’d never have guessed when he left Destiny Islands that he’d wind up _here_ , in a hospital with blood in his hair and under his fingernails. He’d never have guessed that he’d end up in a chair winding bandages around people’s arms and legs, chests and hands and feet, blood smeared on his clothes, and happy to be doing it.

It’s more than just something to do. There’s no rush of victory, but he gets a quiet, content little thrill when he finishes with each new person. It isn’t as good as taking all their pain away, but he doesn’t feel useless.

When the news comes that it’s all over, that Konoha won, the whole room bursts into a tired but heartfelt cheer.

There are still patients, though. It feels like hours before, having finished cleaning his table, his chair, and the floor around his workstation, Riku glances up and realizes that there are no patients in the room at all, new or being treated or walking out. Just him and close to two dozen other volunteers.

They all seem to notice around the same time, and a laugh goes around, partly relief, mostly tiredness. Riku stumbles to his feet and stretches. He gathers up his dirty rags—leaving the clean ones and the unused bandages to be picked up by someone  _without_ dried blood under their nails and pressed into the creases of their hands—and takes his own bucket of water, following another volunteer to a laundry room with a sink. The water gets dumped, the empty buckets stacked against the wall, and the bloodstained rags join a mountain of their brethren. Riku eyes it warily, wondering if it’s really okay to just. Walk away from it.

Surely  _someone_ will have to deal with it. Probably someone even more exhausted than him—

“I wouldn’t blame ’em for just burning all of this,” says the person he followed, an older woman with her forehead-protector hanging around her neck.

“Yeah,” is all Riku can come up with. Her words give him permission to not deal with that mountain, though, and he manages to smile at her for it.

The woman turns to him and grins. “Dead on your feet, huh? You’re not the only one. Hope you don’t have to walk far.”

Riku makes a face. He’s…pretty sure he knows how to get home from here. Maybe. Probably. (If he doesn’t quite make it, at least there are no Sound or Sand ninja to kill him while he’s asleep in the road, right? His mind flashes back to Hayashi, killing the Sand-nin, and he barely represses a shudder.) Even if he does make it, though: “Five stories up.” Five flights of stairs. He dearly does not want to climb up all those stairs.

Making a commiserating noise, the woman pats his head and says, “Don’t fall down those or you’ll just wind up back here anyway.”

Riku nods, suppressing the urge to crawl under one of the tables or chairs or even onto that mountain of rags and just  _sleep_. (No, not the rags. His skin crawls at the thought.)

Apparently, someone in the hospital or the universe agrees, because somewhere between that room and the entrance to the hospital itself, he picks up a shadow.

Not just any shadow, either: Kato, hand all wrapped up now, stitches on her face. (When did her face get busted? Riku doesn’t  _remember_ that, but it’s been a long day.) “Hey. How’re you holding up?”

He shrugs. “Tired. I didn’t get hurt, though. How’re you?”

She copies his shrug. “The medic-nin says I’m still in shock. Apparently, after that goes away, the fact that I don’t have some of my fingers will really hit me.” She waves her wrapped hand. “And here I thought it already had.”

“That happened to a friend of mine,” he tells her. “When he broke his arm. It didn’t actually register until he tried to reach a glass of water on that side and couldn’t move the arm at all.” Sora knew that his arm was broken as soon as it happened, of course, but it didn’t sink in until later that day, when he was thirsty and tired and not thinking.

That was the last time Sora’s mom let Riku in to see him.

“Huh. That sucks.” She falls silent, keeping pace next to Riku.

“You live over here?” he asks after almost a block.

Glancing around, she makes a so-so gesture with her good hand. “A little more that way,” and she nods to the left. “But when all of you came out of that room, you looked ready to fall over and sleep on the floor. Some of the medics asked those of us who were mostly healed to tail you guys, and when I spotted you, I figured I’d walk with someone I sort of knew.”

He nods. “Fair enough. What about the guy? Maki?”

“Stuck overnight for observation. If he’s lucky, he’ll get out tomorrow.” She grins without humor. “Isn’t it funny? My hand’s totally messed up, but I’m fine to leave a couple hours later. His eardrum will grow back fine, but he has to stay there.”

“Oh.” What else is he supposed to say— _no, that_ _’s not funny at all_? Or  _I_ _’m sorry about your hand_? Instead, he asks, “Are you guys teammates?”

She blinks at him, and then her expression clears. “I forgot, you sort of jumped in there halfway. Yeah. He’s Maki Saburou, and I’m Kato Shinju. We had a mission together a week ago, just got back in time for the Exams. Lucky us, huh?”

“Yeah, lucky. What about your teammate? Er, your other teammate?”

“Yoshida Tarou. The one with the hair.” She tries to demonstrate  _something_ with her hand over her head, but Riku honestly isn’t sure what. His confusion must be obvious, because she keeps trying. “With the big brown deer eyes? And the, um… He was right there, seriously, how did you not notice the deer eyes?”

“The…young one?” guesses Riku. “Or the jounin?”

“Young one. The jounin, Ito, came with Ueda and the medic-nin. Don’t ask me where they came from; we’d just gotten that barricade set up when they showed up. Good timing, too. The Sound-nins would have slaughtered us if they hadn’t.”

Riku nods. “You were the first group Hayashi and I ran into. We were coming from the stadium; maybe that’s where they came from.”

“Could be.”

There’s another block-long silence.

Then, quietly, Kato—Shinju? Or is that rude, since he doesn’t really know her that well?—says, “I hope they’re all okay.”

“Me too.”

After that, Riku doesn’t really want to talk; it feels…not quite disrespectful, just trivial. Like anything he can say doesn’t really matter, after they’ve brought up the fact that Shinju’s teammate and the others might  _not_ be okay. Even when they get to his apartment building, he almost doesn’t feel like breaking the silence.

“This is it,” he says anyway.

She glances up. “Where’s yours?”

“Top.”

“Damn. You’ve just got all the luck, don’t you?” With a sigh, she starts for the stairs.

“You don’t have to come up with me,” he tells her. “I’m not gonna fall down.”

That statement might be better received without his white-knuckled grip on the stair-rail, but all she says is, “Might as well.”

On the second flight, she asks, “So, how old are you, anyway?”

“Thirteen.”

She pauses. “And you just made genin?”

Scowling, he walks past her. “I just got to Konoha a couple months ago, so, yeah.”

“Where were you before Konoha?”

On the one hand, no one’s told him  _not_ to talk about Destiny Islands or other worlds. On the other, very few people back on the Islands even believe in other worlds, and he knows that people in Konoha don’t learn about them in school. “On an island pretty far away. My father…wanted to get away from ninja.” Which makes him sound like a missing-nin, and probably does Riku no favors, but it’s the best thing he can come up with on short notice.

Kato nods and doesn’t seem put off by it. “That medic-nin said you were Hatake. Like the White Fang and the Copycat-nin, right? If I was related to one of them, I’d run off, too.” When Riku shoots her a puzzled look, she says, “I’m a chuunin at twenty-four. Compared to  _them_ , I’m pretty much a failure of a ninja. If I had that clan name hanging over my head, too…” She shakes her head, although she’s grinning like it’s a joke. “Instead, I’ve just got parents pushing for marriage.”

“Ugh,” Riku says, with all the disdain of a thirteen-year-old for the concept of  _getting married_.

“Tell me about it.”

Then they’re on walking onto Riku’s floor, and she breathes an “oh thank goodness” while Riku stops to catch his breath, leaning against the railing.

“My apartment’s a few doors down. If you want, I could make some tea...?”

Shaking her head, Kato straightens. “No, thank you. I’ll just…stay here, and make sure you get in okay. And then maybe I’ll roll down the stairs. That’ll be quicker.”

“And then you can stay overnight with Maki,” he says, smirking.

She groans. “Don’t even  _joke_ about that. Now, off with you, kiddo. Go, collapse in your bed, sleep for a week. I know  _I_ will.”

He goes, incredibly thankful when the door opens without needing to be unlocked. He’s not entirely sure the key is where he last put it; he doesn’t quite remember where that even is.

Riku shoulders through the door, kicking off his shoes in the vague direction of their normal spot. Part of him wants to drop the weapons-pouch there, too, since it’s a sweaty weight on his thigh, but part of him  _really_ does not like the idea of leaving all his knives here. He stares at the wall for a few moments, decides that he can sleep with the pouch on this once, and then decides that he doesn’t have enough energy to even change out of his bloodstained, ripped clothes. If Naruto had a couch, Riku honestly would not have even tried to make it to the bedroom.

He might’ve noticed his uncle a little quicker, though.

“You could have  _said_ something,” he says, once he’s caught his breath, returned the knife to his pouch, and rubbed the new bruise on the back of his head.

Kakashi just shrugs, not moving out of his seat at the table to check on Riku or  _anything_. Jerk. His eye even crinkles a bit in amusement. “Hello to you too, Riku. How’s my favorite nephew doing?”

“Tired. Going to bed.” And, making good on his words, Riku heads in the direction of the bedroom.

Kakashi catches his wrist before he gets more than a step and asks, “Are you okay?” He looks Riku up and down, clearly checking for injuries, before Riku can respond.

All the dried blood probably does not reassure his uncle.

Riku sighs and shakes Kakashi off. “I’m fine. I didn’t get hurt. I’ve been at the hospital, doing bandages, for the last…I don’t know. Day. Can I go to bed, now?”

“Sure, sure, of course. Don’t wait up for Naruto.”

Riku freezes. “W-why not?” He isn’t even irritated at himself for the way his voice cracks, because  _what happened to Naruto_?

“Ah, don’t worry. He’ll be fine, but he needs to stay in the hospital for tonight. Sakura and Sasuke as well.”

Good. Good. Such good news, Riku won’t even kill Kakashi for scaring him like that. He inhales, counting all the way up to seven, holds for three, exhales for another seven. He does that five times before his pulse stops racing. Calm now, he asks, “And you’re fine, too?”

Kakashi blinks. “Of course. You don’t need to worry.” He reaches over and ruffles Riku’s hair.

Riku pulls away with a frown but can’t bring himself to say that he hasn’t been worried. He hasn’t  _let_ himself worry until Kakashi said not to wait up, and then it’s like… Worry is now the blood in the bandaging room: everywhere he looks, the only thing he can smell, burrowing into every crevice in and around him.

“What about Gai? And his team? And—”

“Fine, as far as I know.” A pause. “Gai is fine. I’m sure his adorable students are as well. I’ll come by tomorrow morning,” Kakashi says, and then, like an afterthought: “There are things you’ll need to know. But for now, get some sleep.”

“Right.” Slightly tenser than before Kakashi’s afterthought, Riku retreats to the bedroom. Tomorrow, he can see if Kakashi knows how to get bloodstains out of clothes, and if that’s impossible, he’ll probably do what the older woman at the hospital suggested and just burn them.

For now, though, he has a soft bed and his knives within reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst. Psst. I have 3k of Chapter 13 already written. _Chapter 11 might come out later this month._ :D
> 
> Also, come talk to me on [tumblr](http://heraldaros.tumblr.com/)! I live for reviews and comments, guys. And kudos. And likes. Really, just, any attention at all lmao.


	11. Funerals are for the Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moody funeral chapter no one asked for, featuring conflicting cultural rituals re: death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: unacknowledged PTSD including brief flashback and a heaving episode; mentions of gore, blood, and injuries; mentions of violence; cultural insensitivity (see notes at bottom for details); this chapter is in general very preoccupied with death, so if that's not your jam, check the notes at the end of it for a summary and stay tuned for next time!
> 
> The death/funeral/mourning rituals were based on multiple existing ones. A lot of cultures have double-burials, cremations, sky-burials, etc. I drew a lot of inspiration for this chapter, and the mythology for Destiny Islands that I've created, from _Final Fantasy X_ , which itself draws on I believe Shinto practices.
> 
> STYLE NOTE: there are two main threads in this chapter: Riku holding a funeral and getting from Riku waking up after the battle to that funeral. The sections flip back and forth in an orderly progression and meet at the end.

_First water, then life. This is how the world is born; this is how magic is born; this is how people are born. This is what everyone must return to when they die._

_Water, then life, and then water again._

///

The Secret Place always smells a little damp, salt from the nearby ocean unable to overwhelm the scent of moss and wet rock. Riku’s long since found all the most comfortable places to curl up, when the heat gets to be a little too much or he just needs a couple minutes by himself.

After endless days spent this way, it’s deeper than thought to run his fingers along familiar designs. Riku doesn’t notice, immediately, that there’s anything wrong with the markings.

A few minutes of mindlessly smoothing his thumb over a particular symbol is enough for the shape to register.

The Konoha leaf symbol should  _not_ be in the Secret Place.

Riku stiffens and looks around:  _none_ of the symbols are right. None of the pictures he and Sora spent hours carving into the walls and rocks are here. It’s all ninja writing, interspersed with the village symbols for Leaf, Sand, and Sound.

There’s also a door. A  _shut_ door.

 _You still have time_. Riku’s not sure if he’s just remembering the words or if they’re said again. He listens hard, but nothing follows; he can’t hear the waterfall outside, distant waves, or even seagulls’ cries. He  _does_ hear someone else’s heartbeat, out of pace with his own, jarring and dissonant and like it’s coming from right next to him. Without a second thought, his hand goes to the pouch on his thigh. He pulls out a knife.

Spinning around reveals that he’s all alone in the Secret Place, with the door and the wrong carvings and the heartbeat. With an itching feeling between his shoulder blades, he leaves the cave.

It’s not the play island outside: it’s the bridge halfway between Konoha and the island he was born on. On one side of the bridge is his grandfather; on the other, the Hokage.

“Have you learned how to use that?” his grandfather says. The bridge is too long; the words shouldn’t carry. They do anyway.

Riku looks down, and the knife in his hand isn’t a knife, it’s the weird weapon he woke up with in the stadium. He frowns.

“You have time,” the Hokage says, and Riku  _jumps_ , swirling around with the polearm up in a guard. The Hokage looks—kind. Knowing. “You have time to decide who Hatake Riku is.”

 _The door is still shut_ , the voice says, and it seems to come from the weapon in his hand.  _Listen. The power within you is no longer sleeping. You need to wake up._

///

Everybody knows that you have to do right by the dead. Not everyone agreeson what that looks like. Riku grew up saying his prayers in Leviathan’s Temple: while he doesn’t have many memories of his early childhood, he does remember the funerals. There were several when he was young—even one that he and his mother came back to attend after they moved, because it was his grandmother’s brother and you show up for family.

The first part is private, only for the immediate family. Once the body is just a body, soul untethered from it but probably still present, that body is wrapped up and taken to the temple to be buried in the cellar. The family goes back home and washes everything the dead person touched in death and in life. Whatever food was in the house is committed to the ocean; clothing is soaked and left to hang dry, along with bedding, curtains, blankets; the windows, walls, ceilings, and floorboards are all scrubbed, with every piece of furniture taken out of the house and washed as well.

When the family is done, the body is ready. Everyone is invited. The community meets on the beach: the priest and the head of the family bring the body. The body is transferred to a little boat, a soul barge, which is towed out to sea and anchored into place. In the old days, a proper Summoner would dance the Sending over it in the open water, sending the soul back to Leviathan to be cleansed and reborn; nowadays, Summoners are rare, so the barge gets anchored next to a pier and someone, usually an apprentice to the priest, dances beside it.

At that point, it’s just a corpse, spirit hopefully divorced from dead flesh, but sometimes spirits get confused. The body has to go so the spirit knows it needs to move on.

Those least related to the family (the most distant cousins, or the youngest generation of children-of-children-of-children) build the pyre on top of the soul barge. They release it from its anchor and, in a separate boat, tow it out past the breaker zone. Once the danger of the barge returning to shore is past, the furthest-related grandchild or cousin lights the pyre and holds the vigil along with the priest. The body burns inside its soul barge, which follows it into death and takes the spirit to the deepest waters, to Leviathan.

Riku sat that vigil, for his great-uncle. The funeral started mid-afternoon and the sun wasn’t even starting to set by the time the soul barge collapsed into the water. Still, there had been a kind of spiritual chill that Riku, out on the open ocean at ten with no one but the priest’s silent-grimed faced apprentice for company, hadn’t shook off for days.

The wake afterward had helped, he supposed. Everyone else in the community—everyone who didn’t clean the house, build the pyre, or hold the vigil—arranges a feast. Usually, they tell stories about the dead person, to remind the spirit (if it’s still around) that they were loved, cherished, remembered. The un-mourned, unremembered dead cultivate resentment in the sunlit zone of the sea, feeding on it until they become powerful enough to resist the pull of the ocean.

Resentful spirits that returned to shore in myths were called Fiends, and they usually attacked their friends and families first. Nowadays, there are no Fiends, but the relatives of the recently-dead who were not properly laid to rest still face consequences for neglecting their responsibilities.

///

Riku wakes up to the smell of fried eggs and the disconcerting sight of _that_ weapon in his hand once again.

He drops it and jerks away, not sure how he brought something out of his dream, not sure whether this is a weird ninja thing or a weird magic thing or just a weird _him_ thing. The weapon lands on his mattress, and in a moment of panic, Riku kicks it away from him. His blankets go with it. Once he can’t see it anymore, he closes his eyes and takes—he counts them—ten deep breaths, noting the scents in his apartment.

Dried blood and gunpowder; eggs, toast, fruit juice; sweat; steel; plants; dogs; very, very faintly: Sakura and Ino’s perfume, all the food they made that morning. (Was it really just two days ago?)

When Riku rescues his blankets, the polearm is nowhere to be seen. So. Maybe he’s going insane. Maybe this is the magic his mom mentioned right before he left. He’s not ruling anything out, but he’s panicked once this morning, and he figures he shouldn’t do that again unless he actually has a solid  _reason_ for it.

Maybe he’ll be able to visit his mom soon. Then he can ask her what she meant. If  _she_ has no clue about this weird disappearing weapon,  _then_ he can freak out about it.

Kakashi is in his kitchen, on the bench he brought for Riku. Riku doesn’t deserve this.

There’s a plate for him. Eggs and toast, and a glass of juice next to it. Kakashi even sounds sincere when he greets Riku with a “good morning!” He has his own plate, but it’s full; he’s been waiting.

“Gai was glad to hear you weren’t hurt,” Kakashi says, utterly bland. Riku, mouth full of egg, glances up; the mask is still in place, book held idly in one hand, but a piece of toast is missing off his uncle’s plate. “His team told us you were awake, with a medic-nin.”

A swallow, and then, with some defensiveness: “I wasn’t—she wasn’t there for  _me_ ,” Riku says. “I was helping.”

“You were involved in a battle in the streets,” Kakashi says. “The Jounin Commander is assembling reports on what happened yesterday.”

Kakashi isn’t the Jounin Commander, so that kind of implies that Kakashi is sneaky enough to be eavesdropping (or sneaky enough to look at reports he shouldn’t), or else he’s important enough to have that information shared with him legitimately.

Was Kakashi asking about him, or did the Jounin Commander just volunteer that information? Riku could ask, but he’s not sure he’d get an honest answer; he’s not sure he can believe  _any_ answer he gets from his uncle, really. Not because the man’s malicious, exactly; it’s more like whatever answer he gave would be some kind of secret test, like the bell test he threw Riku into on his first day in Konoha.

“Involved is too much,” Riku says in his own…defense? Is he defending himself? More like throwing himself overboard. “I was just there. I gave a medic my chakra and walked a couple chuunin to the hospital, that’s all.” Kato and Maki; he’s pretty sure Kato told him the medic’s name, but it isn’t coming to mind. Besides those two and Hayashi,  _none_ of the names he learned yesterday have stuck in his head.

“That’s impressive, for your first battle,” Kakashi says, making a point of catching and holding Riku’s gaze. His eye is wide, dark, and utterly serious. “You kept yourself alive.”

A pause. Hesitant, Riku starts to open his mouth, starts to consider that maybe Kakashi is proud of him—

“Especially since you left the stadium yesterday.” He’s caught in the man’s gaze. There’s no killing intent in it, but there is  _intent_ , and Riku gets the sense that his uncle is very, very displeased. Maybe even upset. “Gai and I didn’t know where you were.”

Well,  _Riku_ hadn’t known where  _Kakashi_ was, either. His mouth, which twisted shut when Kakashi spoke, opens again with this rebuttal ready, when Kakashi goes on.

“ _Naruto_ and  _Sakura_ didn’t know where you were.”

Ouch. Riku bites his lip, looks down at his plate.

Naruto’s bed is still made, perfect and empty, its occupant in the hospital overnight. By the door, the space where Sakura’s shoes normally live is bare.

“Neji and Lee said you left with a medic-nin.” Another pause. Riku can’t bear to look up. “She reported on your actions, as did several chuunin and genin.”

“Several…?”

Kakashi’s eye wrinkles. Riku’s still not getting the impression is uncle is genuinely happy with him. “The Jounin Commander was taking statements all night, and you have distinctive hair.”

He doesn’t say any more about that, but he doesn’t look away or go back to eating, either. Just meets Riku’s gaze steadily. The laugh-line wrinkle smooths out, but the intensity, the pressure when his uncle spoke about Riku leaving the stadium, it’s nowhere to be found. Like stale air in a closed-up house, the feeling when the door first opens is overwhelming, but momentary.

Riku breaks the eye contact, turning to his breakfast while his mind flashes to the moment when Hayashi bent over the Sand-nin.

Is  _that_ in any of the Jounin Commander’s statements? On the heels of that thought: if it is, what else has been reported, and about who? Is there a report somewhere on what Kakashi did yesterday? What about Naruto, or  _Sakura_?

All the people he knows, all the friends he’s made—would any of them have been sick, watching Hayashi, or would they have joined her? Would they have gotten there  _first_?

Ino wanted him to practice on human-shaped targets.

Riku shakes his head, trying to shake off the train of thought. It itches, not in the back of his mind, but right between his shoulder blades, like in his dream. When he finishes his food, he asks Kakashi, “What was it you said yesterday, that you wanted to tell me something?”

“Hm, yeah.” Kakashi eyes him, not bothering to hide the evaluation. “I hear you passed your genin test. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“When are you planning to go back?”

Riku stills. There’s no animosity in Kakashi’s expression (what little he can see, anyway), no sense of threat, no intensity. No emotion at all, actually.

There’s no way he’s misunderstanding, is there? Kakashi said “go back.” That can only mean the Islands, right? But how would _Kakashi_ know about that plan—he hasn’t even been in the village for a whole day!

“Uh. What’re you talking about?” Riku sounds squeaky even to his own ears and tries not to cringe. He just doesn’t know  _how_ to stall, or mislead, or outright lie. There’s no way he’s getting out of this conversation without confessing.

Kakashi gives him a flat look. Riku’s face feels too hot.

“Riku. You just experienced an  _invasion_. You must have seen people die.” Riku flinches. Blood under his fingernails and all down the front of him; an eviscerated body and a dying man’s gurgle; Kato’s ruined hand and Mako’s bloody ear and all the bodies they passed on the streets, people he’s probably bumped into in the markets or seen in the training grounds. “That isn’t what you came here for. So: when are you planning to leave?”

Riku has weighed these options. He needs to reweigh them. Adjust. Take yesterday into account. His shoulder blades still itch; when he considers that, he can feel every bruise from yesterday, every stiff patch where blood has soaked and dried into his clothes, every place that rubs too harshly against delicate skin.

His body feels a little like one giant nerve; every inch of him feels hyper-aware, over-sensitized. No, not quite:  _primed_. His breath comes a little faster, his eyes open a little wider, his blood pumps a little quicker. His body, sensing a threat, prepares to run out  _right now_.

Focus is hard: Kakashi’s face swims a little, blurring into Hayashi yesterday right before Riku squeezed his eyes shut.  _Initiative_ , she’d said, and here Kakashi is, asking him when he’ll turn his back on everyone he tried to help yesterday.

The streets must still be in pieces. Even working through the night, Riku can’t imagine all the wounded and the dead have even been found, let alone helped. He can’t remember how many people he bandaged up yesterday, and he was just one of more than a dozen, all told. The only injuries he saw were the easiest ones, and even yesterday he knew that; even yesterday, during a battle, doing the one and only thing he found he _could_ do to help, he’d known it wasn’t very much.

It might not have mattered to anyone else, but it matters to Riku, and it probably matters to the people he helped. There were others who could do it, of course, but _so many_ people were hurt yesterday.

Riku tries to take the least outwardly-obvious deep breaths he can manage, less to hide his anxiety from his uncle and more because it’s embarrassing. (Kakashi’s single eye is too sharp, too focused, for Riku to have a prayer of hiding his reaction.) Still. It isn’t  _fair_. Would Kakashi ask this if Riku were in the hospital, injured? Or would he just assume Riku’s answer?

Better yet,  _which answer_ would he assume, in that case?

Why is Kakashi asking  _when_ he’s going to leave, not  _if_? The Hokage had more faith in Riku than this, and Riku talked to the old man a grand total of three times.

That makes Riku bristle a bit, the implication. Never mind that he was questioning it himself a couple days ago; why does  _Kakashi_ think he’s likely to cut and run? What’s he ever done to give this man  _that_ impression of him?

(It bothers him, is all. Deeply. It would probably bother him even more if Gai or Iruka—or, worse, Sakura or Naruto—said the same thing.)

“I’m not leaving,” he says, making the decision more or less in that moment. “Here, I can help people. I can’t just—leave, when the village is like this, and go back to the Islands.” Abandoning something—or someone—is as good as announcing to the world that it’s worthless. Riku’s been walked away from before. He won’t do that to anyone else. And anyway, how could he sit in a desk and think about math problems, knowing that there are whole blocks of collapsed buildings here? How could he surf or collect shells, knowing that there are people injured,  _maimed_ , who could use even what little help  _he_ can give?

Besides, yesterday the village got invaded, and Riku isn’t even scratched. Tired, still in his gross clothes from yesterday, blood making stiff patches in weird spots and flaking off in little specks every time he moves wrong. He’s a little sore still from when he passed out yesterday, but he isn’t actually beaten up. And he’s going to just…walk away, just like that? Nope, not happening, not in this universe.

“Well then. If you’re sure?” Kakashi isn’t looking at Riku as he asks, but when Riku nods, he goes on: “If you’re going to stay, there are some things you should know…”

///

Sometimes, there isn’t a body to bury and burn. That doesn’t mean the spirit leaves: if anything, the soul is  _more_ likely to hang around familiar places, like a dog whose family has moved without telling it.

Souls are…sticky. Unappeased souls glom onto their living relatives, leaving them tainted. They don’t always mean to, either—they may start out just wanting to stick around, to see how their families are doing. But spirits, like the living, will succumb to grief, and that grief has no outlets for the dead. It turns to envy, and resentment. These become anger toward the living, which sometimes manifests as a streak of bad luck. Most times, though, the spirit doesn’t do anything to the _person_.

You can be tainted without noticing anything yourself: the taint only affects those  _around_ you, transmitted with your touch. Your friends might get sick a little more often or be a little more prone to injury; pets will sicken or run off; endeavors will fall apart bit by bit.

Children, though. Children can be  _born_ with that taint running through them. No one wants to risk  _that_ , so it’s important to appease the spirits of the dead, body or no body.

A proper proxy needs to be obviously linked to the person: tokens, particularly sentimental objects, things they handled and cared about, work the best. Items associated with the person: their favorite book, a meal they always made, something they built and expressed pride in.

Riku doesn’t have anything like that of the Hokage’s. All he has is the man’s name, and one serious conversation. It’ll have to be enough.

///

In Konoha, they bury their dead. Riku tries not to flinch when Kakashi explains, tone droll and eye sharp, but he’s not at his best, so the motion’s probably still obvious.

Riku needs a salt bath. And a priest. He  _walked through Sasuke_ _’s ghost town_. How many restless spirits have glued themselves to him?

No  _wonder_ the village got invaded. He’s amazed it hasn’t happened more often.

In Konoha, they bury the dead, and then carve their names on stones to visit later. Maybe that’s holding off the spirits: you’re  _supposed_ to wash them out to sea, so they can be cleansed and reborn, but it isn’t like Konoha has a beach. Remembering the dead might keep them from tainting the living.

(How much time is Sasuke spending, praying to his dead relatives? How much longer until it isn’t enough? There are a  _lot_ of houses in that section, so if even a fraction start leaking bad luck onto Sasuke, he’s in for a rough few years.  _He_ needs a salt bath and a priest.)

Still, Riku’s not enthused at the idea that he’s been walking on angry spirits these past weeks. That sort of thing ought to be warned for. The worst part is, Kakashi doesn’t seem to have a clue. He talks Riku through the whole funeral ceremony, and not one bit of it sounds like enough.

There are remembrances, which sound nice, and mourning; there will be food, so that’s the same, but there’s no washing, no dancing to send off the spirit, no burning of the body, no commitment of the ashes to the sea, no vigil. The corpse is locked in the ground, where its spirit can poison the entire village if and when its ill will overpowers its sentiment.

Riku doesn’t like to think that way about the Hokage, but no matter how good a person is, being stuck watching the living without being able to interact with them will sour  _anyone_. Maybe the old man’s spirit will leach outward; there are some legends that go like that, to explain coral reefs and freak storms on the eve of major battles. Old warriors, witches, and chiefs, never laid to rest properly, reaching out to help their island the only way they still could.

This isn’t a legend, though, so Riku doubts it’ll go that way. Real life is way more mundane. Real life sucks, so in real life, the Hokage’s dissatisfied spirit is probably going to curse his family and everyone he cared about. Riku tries to ignore the nagging reminder in the back of his mind that Naruto and the Hokage seemed _really_ close, because on the one hand, this is going to really upset Naruto, and on the other hand,  _Riku_ is living with Naruto.

Bad luck is contagious; spirit-taint is  _specifically_ way worse for everyone around the tainted person.

Riku’s gonna need that salt bath and priest.

///

To send a person to Leviathan by proxy, you need something that represents them and something to take them to the God of Water. The easiest option is to build a miniature soul barge, which is basically a fancy wooden container that floats. Riku brings his knives, a matchbox, and what other supplies he manages to scrounge up. As he walks, he collects wood from damaged houses and felled trees; by the time he gets to the river, he has almost an armful, but he follows the river to a wooded training ground and collects even more.

It’s all wet from the rain, which has only just trailed off into drizzles and rainbows. Konoha rain is still upsettingly  _cold_ and all-around awful, but Riku tries his best to ignore it. He has a mission: build two barges, each one about as long as his forearm.

He has wet wood, a knife, and some rope in his belt-pouch. He makes do.

///

Kakashi bundles a half-aware Riku into the shower, and then bustles him into clean clothes and trots him through the town like a senile elder. Riku, meanwhile, tries not to flinch at every touch, tries not to look too closely at his surroundings when they’re on the streets, and trips about half-a-dozen times even with Kakashi’s guidance.

The Hokage is dead. Riku can barely wrap his mind around it. The invasion that left him, a brand-new, barely-trained genin, without a scratch—that invasion  _killed_ the Hokage.

He’ll never get to talk to the Hokage again. Never get to show the Hokage what he thinks his trunk is; never get to see the Hokage solve any puzzle that Riku represents. He’ll never get to tell the Hokage what their conversation meant to him.

The whole village is devastated, it turns out. A lot of people are dead, and a lot more injured.

The Sound ninja ran off, apparently led by some former student of the Hokage’s; the Sand ninja, on the other hand, have formally surrendered. The daimyo and the nobles all lived, so there’s no problems there.

Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura are all in the hospital right now, but not seriously injured. Tenten and Lee got to go home last night, though Neji collapsed from chakra exhaustion and eyestrain sometime during the invasion. Kakashi is fairly certain Asuma and Kurenai’s teams are fine, as well. Iruka and his students are shaken up, but unharmed.

All in all, most of the people Riku knows made it through yesterday in one piece. Part of him is guilty for the huge relief he feels about that; there must be some people in the village who lost family and close friends last night, but Riku’s glad not to be one of them.

Instead, Riku’s one of the ones left to mourn. Kakashi takes him to what seems like the only open store in Konoha: the sign in front is mangled but still hanging, two large gouges and some burn marks obscuring what might have once been a picture of needle and thread. The door isn’t so much open as missing, but people trickle in and out at a steady clip.

The clothing store is staffed by two people: a kid sitting in the back and an old woman who must be as old as Riku’s grandmother. She takes one look at Riku and clucks her tongue before standing him in front of a single, barely-cracked mirror to make a few adjustments to his new funeral suit.

There’s a forehead-protector hanging on the wall behind her desk. Her knuckles look raw, and as much as Riku tries not to notice, he spots at least half-a-dozen bruises on her. Her hands are gentle when she measures him and notes the places where she needs to adjust seams and other lines. Before long, she’s passing the suit off to the kid, who turns out to have bandages all up both arms and a leg propped up on a stool.

Kakashi pays, says he’ll send someone for it later. The old woman turns to the next person in line, a couple with a little girl who can’t be more than four. The girl has a black eye; the mother’s arm is in a sling and her forehead-protector is obviously dented, while the father, no forehead-protector visible on him, smells like blood and ash.

With Kakashi’s help, Riku gets out of the shop and halfway down the street before he nearly loses his breakfast. It doesn’t actually come up, just feels like it will, which is maybe even worse. It leaves Riku on his knees in the small space between two buildings, heaving uselessly and trying not to cry on top of it.

///

It’s nearing sunset by the time Riku finishes both barges. He looks them over to make sure they pass muster: they’re sturdy little containers, more boat-like than a traditional barge would be, but then, Riku needs them to float. He pulls out a scroll that he had Sakura check for him before the funeral and uses it as a model to carve first Sarutobi Hiruzen’s name, then the official symbols for the people of Konohagakure.

His lines are shakier than he likes, but unfortunately, that’s the best he can do. Once he’s carved the names on the inside of the barges (to let the spirits know where to go), he carves the leaf symbol all around the outside of both. He’s not great at carving, and the knife isn’t built for it, so his hand starts cramping partway through the first barge and some of the symbols are lopsided. Pretty much all of them are different sizes.

He takes some deep breaths. Spirits appreciate intent. Intent can keep you alive, even if you screw everything else up. Magic has rules, and this is one of them: do the best you can, and your intentions will matter.

The wood that he hasn’t used goes into the barges. He follows it with leaves from the trees around him (this is the  _village hidden in the leaves_ , after all), a few he plucked from Naruto’s still-thriving plants, some he found on the way here. A whole vine, almost three feet long, that he almost stepped over in the street goes into the barge for the people of Konoha. Two petals from the flower he’d been handed to put on the Hokage’s grave go next, one into each barge. Two scrolls that he’s written in: one on the history of the Hokages (he made sure it’s the one that talks about the Third), one on the founding of Konoha.

Too many people died—Riku still doesn’t have an actual number to fix in his mind, so he’s just doing the best he can. It might be enough, it might not.

///

Sakura and Naruto are both pale and asleep when he goes to visit them. Ino isn’t, but her whole team is with her. Riku is officially introduced to Sarutobi Asuma, who looks good for a man whose father just died and whose student is in the hospital bed in front of him.

Sasuke is trying to escape his room, to the chagrin of the poor genin in charge of that hallway. Riku walks in on the argument. Sasuke looks pretty healthy, if tired, so the genin is probably mostly upset by the fact that Sasuke is attempting to leave via his  _fourth-floor window_ when there are perfectly good stairs down the hall.

“I’m picturing how my uncle will react if you break your leg,” Riku tells Sasuke, leaning against the door frame and watching as the genin finally wrestles Sasuke off the ledge.

“I’m fine,” Sasuke says, in a tone that could strip paint. He has only one large bandage at the base of his neck and some abrasions on his hands, arms, and legs. They don’t even look bloody, just a little skinned.

“Then walk out the door like a normal person,” Riku says. He glances at the genin, a girl maybe four years older than him, with close-cropped black hair and the kind of scrunched-up expression that comes from babysitting particularly stupid toddlers. She looks tired, and like she put on eye makeup before the Chuunin Exam and hasn’t had much of a chance to wash her face since then. “Hey, are you okay?”

Sasuke visibly grits his teeth, and the girl looks shocked-then-pleased, so hey, success on all fronts. She rubs her eyes and then makes a face when—whatever that is, something black and flaky, smears on her hands. “I. Yeah. I’m good. As long as no one gets hurt any worse, they won’t send me back to the Academy.” She says this with the rote tone of a statement much-repeated. Then she wheels back around to glare at Sasuke. “So,  _do not_ jump out of that window. You can walk out like your friend suggested.”

“He’s  _not_ my friend,” Sasuke all but snarls at her, more vicious than Riku’s ever heard him. The girl doesn’t seem to particularly care—she throws up her hands and _actually says_ , “I don’t care! Don’t jump! I’m leaving!” and then walks out—but Riku eyes Sasuke warily.

Maybe the bad-spirit-leaking has finally started to get to Sasuke? Maybe something happened yesterday. Maybe he didn’t get much sleep. Still, Riku’s freshly aware of the fact that, although he and Sasuke are technically the same rank, Sasuke could probably kick his ass, even exhausted and grumpy. Possibly  _especially_ exhausted and grumpy, when he’ll try to end it quickly instead of giving Riku opportunities to take advantage of being underestimated.

“Sakura and Naruto are fine,” he offers quietly, since  _he_ _’d_ want to know how Kairi and Sora were doing, no matter how pissed off he was. “So’s my uncle.”

Sasuke looks at him, and the snarl is just. Gone. He looks totally wiped, and upsettingly dead-eyed.

“The Hokage’s dead,” Riku goes on, like ripping off a band-aid, “if no one’s told you that yet. There’ll be a funeral soon. Do you have anything to wear?”

“Yes. Of course.” Then he seems to consider, and says, “Did Kakashi send you? I’m fine.” Another pause. “This is the fourth floor. I wouldn’t even break my leg.”

Sasuke looks tired enough, still, to break his leg on the  _stairs_ , let alone jumping that far. Riku doesn’t say that. What he says is, “Whatever. Don’t make more work for that genin.”

He starts to head out, only to stop at Sasuke’s quiet, “Wait.” A glance over his shoulder shows him that Sasuke’s looking lost in the middle of the room. After close to a minute of silence—which is  _pushing it_ , as far as Riku’s concerned, when the conversation started with this kid claiming they aren’t friends—Sasuke finally says, to the floor, “Naruto will be glad. That you’re okay.” Another agonizing pause. “He was worried yesterday.”

Riku waits to see if he’ll say more, and when that seems unlikely, he nods and says, “Thanks for worrying. I’m glad you’re okay, too.” And then he beats a hasty retreat before Sasuke can issue any denials or go back to snarling.

///

_From water comes the soul. Water is shapeless, formless, but holds substance. The first magic was the magic of water, the magic of reshaping. The first magic was the magic of the soul. This is what sets people apart: humans were born on land, but their souls were born in the sea. When a person dies, their soul must be returned to the sea, to be reshaped and returned to the land, just as water falls onto land from the clouds only to run back into the ocean through rivers._

There are prayers for the dead that only the priests know. There’s the dance, which only apprentices are  _supposed_ to know, but even kids like Sora and Kairi—who don’t believe in Leviathan, not  _really_ —practice, for the fun of it.

Riku says the mourning prayers that he knows, which you’re mostly supposed to say when you feel like the spirit might have stuck around or come back when it shouldn’t. The sea washes souls out, but sometimes they come back with the tide. Every child of Leviathan learns the prayers that will gently disentangle the soul, sending it back to where it ought to go.  _We come from the water, we return to the water. Your time here has ended. Now is the time to return to Leviathan. Your soul will come back to us when it is ready. Now is not that time. We are not ready, and you are not ready. Now is the time for the deep sea, and cleansing. We come from the water, we return to the water. It is time for you to go home._

While he says the prayers, he dances, to the best of his ability. Traditionally, you’re supposed to have a prayer-staff, to direct the souls like a conductor directs an orchestra. If he hadn’t managed to lose the weird polearm-thing from his dream, he could’ve used  _that_ , but there’s no use in regretting the missed opportunity. Instead, he uses his knife, which is  _way_ too short, but whatever. He makes do. He’s pretty sure he misses a bunch of steps, but the important thing is the intent, and the feeling.

He’s pretty sure those are the important things. Handily, Sakura’s advice about body-flickering—always spot before you move—helps when he tries to execute some of the more ambitious twirls, feeling more than a little silly in his ninja funeral suit.

Then there are remembrances.

Riku doesn’t have many, of course, but he tells the dead about their village. He tells them about how everyone has come together for the funeral, and how the villagers are all taking care of each other.

He tells the Hokage that Naruto is awake and seems okay. He tells the Hokage that he’s planning on staying. He’s not sure the Hokage’s spirit is even here, even listening, but it feels important to say out loud.

Maybe this is why Kakashi talks to the memorial stone. It doesn’t feel like  _enough_ , but maybe it is, for people here.

///

Riku goes to the funeral, stands by Kakashi, and doesn’t cry. It’s weird.

He slips off afterward, and he’s pretty sure he only gets away with it because everyone  _else_ is also slipping off: Kakashi in the direction of the memorial stone, Gai not quite on his heels; Iruka and Naruto wander off somewhere together, the last time Riku sees either of them that day; Sakura is with either Ino or her parents or both; the others that Riku knows all seem to orbit around their parents or siblings or teachers. The smaller kids cry periodically; the bigger kids do, too, but pretend not to. If the adult ninja cry, they’re good about hiding it, possibly helped by the rain.

Making sure everything he needs is in the funeral outfit’s fairly-small pockets or his arms, Riku heads for the river.

Funerals here are very different from funerals at home. And okay, part of Riku can accept that, can acknowledge that different people have different faiths that ought to be respected. But part of him is just kind of horrified that the old man he’d talked to earlier this week is  _dead_ and he’s going to  _rot_ in the  _ground_.

Maybe none of these people  _want_ to be reborn. Okay. Whatever. Riku’s not telling any spirits what they can or can’t do. He’s just going to honor the old guy and the rest of the Konoha dead, and maybe, if he can, get Leviathan’s eyes on the situation.

Leviathan is big on choice. If the Hokage and the others want to rot in the ground, Leviathan’s not gonna yank any of them out. But Riku figures, everyone deserves _options_.

///

Once he’s talked himself a little hoarse and the last light starts to fade on the horizon, Riku builds a little pyre in each boat. One at a time, he lights the pyres. He carries both boats to roughly the middle of the river and sets them carefully down.

When both are cheerfully burning and following the current, Riku returns to the bank and follows their progress on land. This is traditional, and critical: the vigil. Usually, he’d be in his own boat, and he’d light the fire once the pyre-boats were far enough away to not wash back to shore.

He’s  _pretty_ sure the boats won’t head back for land. But. Being pretty sure and walking away is how people wind up spirit-tainted. Riku’s not taking chances.

He repeats the traditional prayers, and then a lullaby to Leviathan that his mother used to sing for him, and then his Konoha history, starting at the beginning. By the time the boats have burned down completely, the moon’s rising, Riku’s hoarse, and the nighttime chill has settled firmly into every bruise and sore spot he has.

Did it do any good? Who knows.

When he gets back to the apartment, Naruto is asleep in his bed, looking stupidly peaceful and unhurt for a kid who hasn’t been home in a month and spent the previous night in the hospital. Riku stays up a little bit later, making sure Naruto’s sleep is sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Details for cultural insensitivity: Riku gives people he largely doesn't know a funeral per his own customs, while acknowledging that this obviously isn't theirs. In real life, _this is a shitty thing to do_. I have Riku doing it here for a lot of reasons, some of which he realizes and some he doesn't, but that doesn't excuse his actions.
> 
> Summary: Riku has a dream featuring ~~the keyblade~~ this weird magic weapon and wakes up with it in his hand; he freaks out and it disappears pretty quickly. He has a conversation with Kakashi in which he learns that his friends are all ok, Kakashi himself is p mad that Riku didn't stay put yesterday, and Kakashi assumes he's gonna leave the village. Again, Riku decides to stay. 
> 
> Kakashi helps him get ready for the Hokage's funeral, but when they go to a tailor to get Riku funeral clothes, Riku sees multiple people injured and nearly throws up. This is not remarked upon. Riku visits Team 7 in the hospital, but only Sasuke is awake (trying to escape via 4th floor window). Riku and Sasuke have a tense conversation, and Sasuke claims not to be friends but then says that ~~he's~~ Naruto will be glad Riku's ok.
> 
> After the official Konoha funeral, Riku conducts his own funeral for the dead, per his own culture's standards. He's very concerned that the spirits of the dead in Konoha are still around and might potentially cause problems; this is part of his own spiritual belief, stemming from the idea that magic and the soul both come from water and need to return to it, or else become resentful of the living. Afterward, Riku returns home, where he finds Naruto sleeping peacefully.  
> /endsummary
> 
> jsyk, this fic has a DEFINITE END POINT on the horizon. Like. There's one more arc. WE ARE NEARING THE END FOLKS. (then there will be a sequel.)


	12. Training Montage Chapter, the Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that Riku's resolved to stay in Konoha and help out however he can, he needs to figure out _how to actually do that_.
> 
> Meanwhile, the gears of plot keep moving. Konoha needs a Hokage, and the wider world is taking note of the jinchuuriki brawl during the Chuunin Exam...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahahaha just barely made it!
> 
> This means that chapter 14 is more or less written (though not entirely edited, yet), but I have not even started chapter 15. Chapter 13 will almost certainly be up sometime in September I hope, depending on how long it takes me to get chapter 15 written.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: there are a couple mentions of blood and violence/gore/injury. It's not explicitly shown, but if that really isn't your jam, you're going to want to scroll past the section that begins with "Riku finds out about the casualties..."
> 
> This ties directly to _the best people_ sidestory 4, so if you haven't read that yet, check it out.

The beach at mid-morning can be peaceful when no one else is around. When it’s just hot enough to discourage activity, but not hot enough for a retreat inside. The tide is flat, waves not so much crashing on the sand as they are gently splashing. Riku stretches out, sprawled all over the paopu tree and contemplating the grey sky.

 _The door is still shut_.

Riku spills over the side of the tree, getting his feet underneath him. He’s not dressed for this—he’s in his old outfit, yellow shirt and baggy pants, no knife-pouch, no  _knives_. He glances around, but there are no shadows, no ninja, no danger.

No one who could have spoken.

The little building nearby ought to have doors, but they’re missing. Riku can see inside, and something doesn’t look right, though he can’t place what exactly is wrong from over here. Exercising caution, Riku keeps his stance loose and his attention on his surroundings as he walks across the bridge, over to the empty doorway.

Inside should be…well, a pretty empty building. Everyone always talked about hauling in a couch, a dartboard, some bean bags. Every summer, they’d sit around and talk about how great it would be to have somewhere comfortable to sit away from the sun, and every summer, it wouldn’t happen.

Instead, the walls are  _covered_. Dozens upon dozens of forehead-protectors are mounted to walls. Some have the Leaf symbol, some the Sand, some Sound, some the weird heart from the first weird dream.

Some are blood-splattered.

There’s no other evidence of violence, but Riku feels the blood drain out of his face. The play island—Destiny Islands in  _general_ —shouldn’t have  _any_ blood.

Riku backs away, a faint tremble taking hold of his hands. His feet feel too heavy, clumsy. He sets them down wrong, stumbles, lands on his ass, and still inches away from the doorway, until he hits the wooden bridge and notices that it’s not the  _only_ thing that’s off.

Hayashi is standing next to the little spring. Hayashi, in her pure-white medic-nin outfit.

Riku swings his legs over the edge of the platform, dropping down to the beach. Hayashi has moved, when he gets closer: now she’s standing in front of the entrance to the Secret Place, back turned to him.

“The door is still shut,” she says, as he pulls himself up the slight ledge. The waterfall almost drowns her out. “You have the key.”

He takes the last few steps toward her. He doesn’t need to look down to know the weapon is back in his hand.

She turns to face him, closes the distance so she’s chin-to-eye with him. “But you have no initiative.” He tips his head back to meet her eyes, then realizes that’s a mistake: her hand isn’t empty, and he stumbles backward, clutching his throat. He makes the same gurgling sound the Sand-nin did.

///

Riku wakes up to someone else’s cooking for the second day in recent memory; he also wakes up to the weapon in his bed. “Why,” he says flatly, as if scolding it will make it stop.

Still, he’s pretty sure he’s gotten the hang of this now: by the time he’s dressed, the weapon is gone, and Naruto’s poking his head in the door. “Breakfast is ready,” he announces, just a touch more subdued than Riku remembers. “You sleep okay? It sounded like you had a nightmare.”

Riku sighs, runs a hand over his face. “Yeah. I’m fine.” Naruto looks like he’s maybe gonna ask about it, so Riku cuts him off: “It’s just, you know, the battle.”

Naruto’s expression softens, before he grins. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay! Like I said, breakfast is ready.” And he pops back out, probably to give Riku a minute to collect himself.

Except it’s  _Naruto_ , since when is Naruto perceptive about that sort of thing?

Riku doesn’t worry about it, just straps on his knife-pouch—he did  _not_ sleep with it two nights in a row, but it’s right next to his pillow, just in case—and heads for the kitchen.

Naruto’s heated up leftovers from The Feast: he’s got rice and noodles in front of himself, but the plate set out for Riku is fish and rice, next to some fresh fruit that had to have been bought this morning and a cup of fresh milk.

When Riku sits down and reaches for the glass, Naruto watches him with intensity. Riku hesitates, and Naruto’s eyes widen.

“Is it no good?”

Riku blinks, then looks at the cup. “No—I mean, it’s fine.” Just unexpected: there was neither milk nor fruit in the apartment yesterday, Riku’s quite sure. “Thanks.”

Naruto’s smile is sunlight and joy. Riku desperately hopes that the funeral yesterday was enough; this kid does  _not_ need any bad luck clinging to him.

Once he’s finished eating, Naruto starts chattering about his month of training. Apparently, he learned how to summon—probably doesn’t mean the same thing here as it does on the Islands—and that’s how he summoned a giant frog in the exam.

“That was a frog?” Riku blinks, thinking back; it  _could_ _’ve_ been a frog, he supposes, if frogs wore clothes. “Huh. That’s really cool, Naruto.” Naruto beams. “I knew you were doing some kind of training, but I wasn’t expecting that.”

Naruto proceeds to describe the guy who taught it to him, which. Well. Riku’s pretty sure his mom would have some Words for that guy, especially if she found out he was corrupting orphans. If this was Kakashi’s pick for Naruto’s mentor, she probably has some Words for him, too. Still, Naruto seems happy about the training he got.

After breakfast, Riku sets a goal of “figure out how to deal with the bloodstained clothes.” Ninja probably have to deal with this problem a  _lot_ , so theoretically, he could ask anyone he knows, but Naruto heads out almost directly after breakfast and Riku’s not entirely sure where anyone else is. He tries Iruka’s apartment first, and he isn’t all that surprised when no one answers; his uncle’s apartment is similarly empty—actually, he’s not all that sure he came to the right place. It’s been over a month since the last time he came here. Maybe it’s for the best that he gets no response.

With those two ruled out, the only other person whose house he knows is Sasuke. He deeply does not  _want_ to go to Bad Luck Central, but he’s out of other options for people he knows. (After this, he figures he might as well try the school and the hospital—he’s sure  _someone_ in one or the other place will know how to help, but he’s also relatively sure that he won’t  _know_ that person, which. Awkward.) Sighing, he sets out for the Uchiha section of the city, muttering a prayer under his breath as soon as he crosses the threshold into Sasuke’s Actually-A-Ghost-Town.

He has a spot of good luck: not only does he, apparently, remember where Sasuke’s house is, but when he gets there, Sasuke is right around the back of the house, practicing in what looks like a well-maintained, smaller version of the Academy practice yard.

Riku leans against the side of the house, watching. Sasuke is  _clearly_ out of his league: not only do his knives all hit their targets, but so do his throwing stars, and he doesn’t just throw from a standing position. He dodges, crouches, spins, frontflips, backflips, somersaults, and jumps—including landing and then jumping  _off_ posts and trees, throwing knives and stars during each step of that practice.

Now, to be fair, not all the weapons hit their targets dead-on. Sasuke’s targets aren’t human-shaped, but there are bull’s-eyes at roughly eye-level and roughly heart-level on six different posts. Some of Sasuke’s weapons hit inside the middle circle, but the ones that don’t are all inside  _a_ circle.

Finished—either satisfied or out of things to throw—Sasuke straightens and then turns to look at Riku. He seems a  _little_ out of breath as he raises an eyebrow. He does _not_ look like he was in the hospital a couple days ago. Riku takes a moment to find his tongue.

“I had a question.”

Sasuke’s other brow goes up.

Defensive, Riku adds, “No one else was at home.”

The eyebrows go down.

“What is it.” Sasuke’s tone isn’t questioning, just resigned, maybe a little exasperated. Or maybe that’s just his face. He doesn’t quite tap his foot, but he looks like he wants to.

“How do you get bloodstains out of clothes?” The eyebrows are back up, and Riku’s back to being defensive. “What? It’s not like I’ve had to deal with them before.”

“And you came to  _me_?”

“I tried Iruka and Kakashi first.” A beat. “And I don’t know where anyone else lives, so…”

Sasuke sighs, like dealing with Riku is such a burden on his busy schedule of hitting all these targets. “Use baking soda and cold water.”

It’s helpful, and Riku’s honestly shocked. Sasuke turns around and starts collecting his weapons out of the various wooden posts.

Still, Riku isn’t a genius, and he’s gonna need more than two ingredients to figure this thing out. “How?”

Sasuke keeps pulling throwing stars and knives out of the targets, and Riku’s not sure at first if he’s being rude or if he just didn’t hear the question. After the last knife is in Sasuke’s weapons-pouch, though, he turns around and says, “I’ll show you, and then you leave me alone. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

So Sasuke’s month of training and the whole invasion have apparently upgraded the kid from “total jerk” to “just kind of a jerk.” Riku’s deeply uncertain of how a month of exposure to  _Kakashi_ would have done that, but here’s the result: Sasuke marches into his house and lets Riku inside, and then demonstrates on the outfit he was probably wearing a couple days ago.

It’s one part baking soda to two parts cold water, dabbed on, and then left to sit “for about an hour.” “Wipe it off after it’s done,” Sasuke says. Then, grudgingly, “It doesn’t always work.”

“I’d rather try than just throw everything out,” Riku says. “Thanks.”

Sasuke lets him out through the front door, and Riku feels eyes on his back all the way through the neighborhood. Maybe it’s Sasuke being paranoid, maybe it’s lingering spirits, Riku isn’t sure and isn’t sure he _wants_ to know. Back at the apartment, he’s got enough baking soda to treat all his own clothes and Naruto’s too. (It’s all wadded up in a corner of the bedroom, and frankly reeks like Naruto was wearing nothing else for the previous month. _Gross_. But Riku might as well  _try_ to salvage everything at once.) Just in case, he also takes a quick bath with a handful of salt thrown in for good measure—it’s less about getting clean than it is about being doused, submerged in the element. He ducks under so even the top of his head is covered and stays there until his breath nearly gives out.

It’s silly, but as he rinses and towels dry, he _feels_ better.

Once all the clothes are treated and sitting and he’s in a clean set of clothes that he doesn’t care all that much about, Riku heads over to the training ground he and Gai usually use. Gai isn’t there, but Lee and Tenten are. Riku…doesn’t really have anything to say to them (glad you’re both alive? I hope none of your friends died? Do either of  _you_ know how to get rid of bloodstains, in case Sasuke’s method doesn’t work?), so after an exchange of nods, he leaves them be and focuses on his normal routine.

He runs through everything he knows, and does wind-sprints and burpees in between exercises, just like Gai would have him do. Lee and Tenten spar nearby, so Riku keeps an eye out, just in case he needs to dodge flying weaponry.

Nothing comes his way, and by the time he’s winding down, Lee and Tenten are wrapping up, too. They’re both chatting, Lee laughing at something Tenten’s said, and Riku waves at both of them before heading back home for lunch.

Some of the bloodstains do come out: Naruto’s outfit looks a little dingy, but better; Riku’s shirt looks almost new. The scarf is a lost cause, though. Riku didn’t even get to wear it a full day. (Hopefully, Sakura will be understanding and not offended that he has to throw it out. He resolves to look for a similar one, anyway—he might not have gotten to wear it for very long, but it had been _incredibly_ useful during its short lifespan.)

Riku spends the next few nights having different weird nightmares, and the next few days looking for things to do. He manages to catch up with Iruka one morning and gets a standing (but temporary) gig making breakfast and dinner for a shelter that houses families with little kids and Academy students whose homes got trashed. Everyone’s clear that that’s just until enough homes have been repaired or rebuilt to house everyone, and that’s fine by Riku. The middle part of his days goes to the hospital, where it turns out they need volunteers for a  _lot_ of things.

He learns four other methods of dealing with bloodstains. He also learns a bunch of swear words, a jutsu for dumping a cup’s worth of water on someone’s head, how to read a medical chart (well, mostly), how to change a bedpan ( _gross_ ), how to change bandages (also kind of icky), and that the girl who stopped Sasuke from jumping out a window is named Kuroishi Tsuru. She’s a genin assigned to the hospital, apparently, and once he starts showing up, she basically scoops him up as her personal intern/errand-boy/second pair of hands.

///

Riku gets back to the apartment after his morning exercises (still weirdly Gai-less) and making breakfast for a bunch of screaming brats and exhausted parents (basically just huge pots of rice and eggs with whatever meat gets brought that morning) to find Naruto frantically trying to pack everything he owns into one huge backpack.

This kid.

“Where are you even  _going_ ,” Riku asks flatly, physically grabbing Naruto to get him to slow down in what looks like his rampage through the apartment.

Naruto explains, and Riku asks more questions that have obviously not occurred to Naruto: how long will he be gone? What will he need to take with him, and what will he be able to get along the way? How much of this has the Pervy Sage planned out—does  _he_ know where they’re going to be sleeping each night, where they can eat, where they can get drinkable water? How much danger will they be in along the way?

“Look, I  _moved here_ with two duffel bags and a backpack,” Riku points out. “There’s no way you need morethan that. You can probably take a lot less. Is this guy gonna be feeding you?”

Naruto doesn’t know.

“Alright, okay.” Riku tugs his hand through his hair, not quite pulling any out no matter how appropriate that would feel. “Let’s do this then. Unpack…all that,” he waves at the half-packed monster bag Naruto’s got on the kitchen table. “Pack clothes for like…a week. If you’re gone longer than a week, wash them.” He grabs Naruto’s shoulders again when the kid turns to do what he says. “No, seriously.  _Wash. Them._ ”

Making a face, Naruto tugs himself free and starts pulling—are those  _bedsheets_? Why would he even need bedsheets?

Meanwhile, Riku surveys their food situation. He hasn’t ever had to really consider making shelf-stable food, but it’s not like Naruto’s going to have a refrigerator.

Or anyone to cook for him. Hm. What can Riku throw together to keep him from starving, that he can make for himself, that won’t go bad in anywhere from a week to a month?

Riku pulls out the dry rice and noodles. He  _knows_ that Naruto can boil water, so those are good staples. Protein will be a problem. There are some nuts in the cupboard—from one of Riku’s more recent shopping excursions, even, so they ought to last for as long as Naruto needs them.

With malice aforethought, Riku tears open a few instant ramen packets and loots the spice packets out of them. If he had even a few hours, he could make his own, but Naruto was very specific that he needs to leave  _as soon as possible_ , so. Needs must.

“Hey! I was planning on taking those!”

Riku puts the packets with the rice and noodles. “And you will be. Pour it into either the rice or noodles. You don’t need these,” he holds up the torn-open packets of dry, deep-fried noodles.

Naruto pouts at him.  _Pouts_. “But I like them.”

Unmoved, Riku throws the packets away, ignoring Naruto’s squawk. He crosses his arms over his chest. “They’re probably why you’re short.”

“Take that back!”

“How about this,” since Riku’s feeling generous. “You eat healthy—which means, if this runs out, you  _don_ _’t_ go get more instant ramen, or sneak any out with you,” Naruto scowls, so that probably already occurred to him, “and  _when you get back_ , I will make you homemade ramen. With whatever you want in it.”

Naruto’s eyes go squinty and suspicious. “You don’t know how to make ramen, though.”

“I’ll learn.” Naruto still looks unconvinced. “Hey, if it’s a promise, it’s a promise. I  _keep_ my promises, okay?”

“Okay.” They shake on it, and, expression guilty, Naruto pulls three ramen cups out of the newly-packed backpack.

 _This kid_.

“If you can get meat, you can add it to either the noodles or the rice. Eggs too, if you can find them. I’ll send you with some vegetables—don’t make that face, you’ll only have to eat them for the first few days and then they’ll be gone. You’ll survive.”

Riku packs up all the food; he’ll have to go back to the market tomorrow to replace the veggies, but Naruto needs them more than he does. The couple of health lessons he’s had to sit through weren’t all  _that_ informative about puberty, but he’s pretty sure Naruto’s still got time to grow if he eats right and sleeps enough.

Once he’s got that situated, he pokes around what Naruto’s taking and what else he might need. There are straps for a sleeping bag on the bottom of Naruto’s backpack; Naruto, in all the excitement, somehow forgot to grab any kind of soap or brush, so Riku slips those in; he also makes sure to pack Naruto’s sleeping cap and, since it’s getting colder lately, an extra blanket.

That’s about all there’s room for, anyway.

Before Naruto goes for who-knows-how-long, Riku gets both how often the plants need to be watered (he was doing  _mostly_ okay, last month, but one’s leaves started drooping; turns out, he watered it a bit too often) and a hug from Naruto.

Naruto clings, a bit.

Since Riku doesn’t have anywhere to be for the next few hours, he walks Naruto out to the gate, partly to see him off, partly to see what this Jiraiya guy is like. If Riku doesn’t like the look of the guy, well, he  _knows_ people now.

Sasuke’s bored enough to be doing training in his own backyard, and Lee and Tenten spar daily for  _hours_. He’s pretty sure he could get a group together to stalk the guy and make him regret mistreating Naruto, if it comes to that.

Jiraiya, it turns out, looks like Jecht’s ninja uncle. He’s a big guy, intimidating, with a general air of  _I_ _’ve kicked bigger asses than yours in my sleep_. Long hair, marks on his face, no Konoha leaf on his forehead-protector (which looks more like a crown than everyone else’s headband, anyway). He seems…amused and fond, looking at Naruto.

Then he turns to Riku, and the look flattens. He’s still grinning, but it lacks sincerity. Riku got used to that shift back on the Islands, when people’s eyes would go from Kairi or Sora to him, but it’s been a while.

“And who’s this?”

“Hatake Riku,” and Riku bows, crisply perfect after a month and a half’s worth of practice, “Naruto’s roommate.”

“Huh.” Jiraiya’s expression is unreadable when Riku straightens. “Good to meet you. You come to say goodbye?”

“And to make sure he didn’t take half the apartment with him.” Naruto protests like he wasn’t in the middle of doing just that when Riku caught him, but Riku’s not looking at his friend. He’s watching Jiraiya’s reactions, trying to get a read on the guy.

Jiraiya glances at Naruto, and his eyes crinkle again in genuine amusement. “Doesn’t look like that’s a problem. You ready to go, kid?”

Before Naruto can answer, Riku asks, “How long are you going to be gone, anyway? Naruto didn’t say.”

“Oh,” Jiraiya’s tone is light, airy, and Riku doesn’t buy it for a second, “probably a month or so. I can’t imagine it taking much longer. Now—”

Riku remembers the day that he learned how to backflip. The kids, in exchange for teaching him, asked a bunch of questions. Kakashi’s analysis had been that they would’ve gotten more answers if they hadn’t let him take any turns asking questions, and Riku himself defended the kids, pointing out that trying to trick your allies was a bad idea.

Jiraiya may or may not be an ally, so it probably isn’t smart to press him too hard, but Naruto’s going to be gone for maybe another whole  _month_ and Riku doesn’t know three things about this guy. So, he follows Kakashi’s advice and sticks to questions.

“Is it going to be dangerous, where you’re going?”

“It shouldn’t be. I—”

“Naruto’s got food for a couple days,” Riku lies blatantly (it’s closer to a week, even given how much Naruto can put away in one sitting), and moves on quickly, because he isn’t a good liar and the longer any deception on his part sits in the air, the more likely he is to be called out on it, “but after that, you’re gonna feed him, right?” Riku slants a look at Naruto. “ _Not_ just ramen.”

That earns Riku a real, booming laugh from Jiraiya. “Of course I’m going to feed him! I can’t make any promises about ramen, though; it’s not my job to watch what he eats.”

Naruto laughs weakly along with him and says, “I’ll be good!”

Riku eyes him for a moment, and then a thought occurs to him. By Naruto’s reaction, the expression on his face must be  _evil_. “You know, if you can’t do it, I can always mention to Gai and Lee that you lost a bet. I’m sure they’ll have some ideas about that.”

Face ghost-white in seconds, Naruto says, “You know, that’s really not necessary! I  _can_ eat other things, you know!”

“Really?” Now Jiraiya looks surprised. It’s fake; he’s clearly going for exaggerated shock. “My sources tell me otherwise, and my sources are  _never_ wrong.”

“I can too! I  _have_ been!” He turns big, pleading eyes on Riku. “You know I have!”

“I know you can for a couple days,” Riku allows. “This’ll be a month.”

Naruto’s eyes are practically dewy when he says, “It might be easier if you promised to make it for a whole week.”

Riku considers the likely process for making ramen. “I guess I could. You’ll have to buy the ingredients, though, if I’m making it for a week.”

“Done!” Naruto grabs for his hand, pumping it once with enthusiasm. “It’s a deal! No take-backs!”

“Sure. ’Course, you have to get back in one piece, first.” Now Riku glances at Jiraiya. The guy looks like he’s pretty dependable in a fight, even with all that hair and the sandals with wooden blocks on the bottom. He turns back to Naruto. “Take care of yourself. If you leave me and Sakura alone with Sasuke and Kakashi, we’ll never forgive you.”

Naruto laughs and promises; they don’t hug again, but Riku does wave them off. Once they’re out of sight and, hopefully, earshot, he heads over to the little booth by the side of the gate.

It’s the same two guys who were here over a month ago when Riku first came in. They look bored, and also beat up: the one with spikier hair has two black eyes and a bandage running across his nose, while the other has barely-visible bandages underneath his forehead-protector cap.

“If it isn’t the littlest Hatake,” Spiky Hair says. “You’re not leaving, are you? We’d need to see a pass.”

Riku is one hundred percent certain Naruto does not have a pass. “Nope. Just wanted to know what you could tell me about the guy who just left.” With Naruto, who again,  _absolutely does not_ have a pass.

Whoever Jiraiya is, he must be pretty important, to be able to just leave with a genin like that.

The two exchange a look, and then Bandage Head says, “Jiraiya is one of the Sannin, the Third Hokage’s students.”

Well, there’s a starting point to ask Iruka about, provided he can  _find_ the teacher. Riku smiles and thanks both guards, starts to head off, and then doubles back when it occurs to him that his mother would be  _so upset_ if she could see him.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your names.”

They turn out to be Hagane Kotetsu (Spiky Hair) and Kamizuki Izumo (Bandage Head), and more amused than offended at Riku’s lapse in good manners. Since he’s already been rude once, he sticks around for a couple minutes and asks them how they’re doing—only because they’re not busy, of course. (And because he’s guilty and feeling the weight of his mother’s judgment hanging over his head, but they don’t need to know that.)

“Hey, settle something for us,” Kotetsu says before Riku can leave for real. “When you got here, Miss Kurenai showed you how to bow, right?” Riku nods, face a little hot. “So, when you held out your hand, that’s how you introduce yourself where you’re from?” Another nod. “So what do you do if you just sneezed into that hand, and before you can wash it, you meet somebody?”

“Kotetsu…” Izumo looks both embarrassed and irritated with this line of questioning.

Meanwhile, Riku has read books that describe “shit-eating grins,” but until this moment, he’s never  _seen_ one. Kotetsu has the biggest, most self-satisfied grin Riku has ever seen.

Still, Riku is thirteen years old and friends with a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds. He knows the answer to this question. And even though Izumo gave him a lead about Jiraiya, the look on Kotetsu’s face is just  _begging_ for Riku to answer the question a certain way.

“I guess it depends on whether or not they saw you sneeze into your hand,” Riku says blandly. Kotetsu laughs; Izumo shudders. “If they  _did_ , you could offer your other hand, or some people offer their elbow to shake,” and he demonstrates; Kotetsu gamely shakes his elbow, still grinning. “If they didn’t see you, you do this.” And Riku holds out his right hand, with his absolute blankest expression.

Kotetsu rests his forehead on the desk, laughing hard. Izumo looks like he has seen the face of death. “You are  _the worst_ ,” Izumo tells his partner. “Without a doubt, the most insufferable person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.” He turns narrowed eyes on Riku. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself. He’s  _never_ going to let this go.”

“That was great.” Kotetsu recovers, wiping tears off his bruised eyes. “Oh, god, I needed that laugh. You’re great, Hatake. Stop by  _any time_ , I mean that.”

///

Riku’s first indication that anything is wrong is when Sasuke catches him just after he gets back, almost mowing down Sakura, who’s chatting with him in the doorway. Sasuke looks  _panicked_.

“Where’s Naruto?”

“He  _just_ left the village with some guy named Jiraiya,” Riku repeats what he just told Sakura, and then, because he’s both worried and apparently  _suicidal_ , he grabs Sasuke’s arm before the guy can take off. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“I have to—” Sasuke even sounds panicked.

“Five words or less:  _what_ _’s going on_?”

Sasuke stares at him, eyes wide and wild. He says, “Itachi’s after Naruto.”

Riku doesn’t know who Itachi is, but this sounds like an emergency, and Sakura’s  _right here_.

“They’re heading north,” he says, letting go of Sasuke, “and Jiraiya’s a big guy, long white hair, wood-block sandals. I’ll get—someone, you—”

Sasuke’s already gone.

Riku looks at Sakura. “Okay, so who’s Itachi?”

///

Uchiha Itachi is  _bad news_ , according to Sakura. He’s the brother who murdered Sasuke’s whole clan. So. Not good.

Sakura and Riku split up: Riku goes to Kakashi’s apartment (hoping to Leviathan that he got the right place, because his next best option is to go to Tenten and Lee and desperately hope one of _them_ can help), while Sakura goes to Ino’s family’s shop. There’s sure to be at least one adult in one of those places who can then sound whatever alarm needs to be to help Naruto.

Shockingly, Kakashi’s tiny apartment is occupied: Kurenai and Asuma turn to look at him when Riku opens the door. Kakashi himself is also present, technically—unconscious on his bed.

“Uchiha Itachi is coming after Naruto,” Riku says, because that seems like the most important thing.

Asuma groans and flicks ash from his cigarette out the window (rude  _and_ unsafe). Kurenai sighs. “Well,  _that_ information moved quickly. We’re aware.”

Did one of them tell Sasuke? Alright then. “Naruto’s heading north with Jiraiya,” Riku assumes these adults, like Kotetsu and Izumo, already know who that is, “and Sasuke’s going after them.”

 _That_ gets a reaction: Asuma snuffs his cigarette out and both of them get to their feet.

“I’ll alert Gai,” Kurenai says, and disappears.

Asuma looks at Riku. “Good job. Do you know where Shikamaru lives?” Riku makes a face; he’s gone there a couple times with Ino and Sakura, but he’s not confident about getting there on his own. Asuma sighs and, in a clipped tone, gives him the directions without any street names. “Go there. If his parents are there, tell them what you just told me; if they’re not, get my lazy student to track them down.” And then  _he_ disappears, too.

Riku blinks, then looks at his uncle. Kakashi, who made it through the invasion with not even a scratch, looks…dreadfully vulnerable, laid out on his bed, pale and sweaty and obviously in pain. His brow is all twisted up, and his face has a sheen of sweat even in the growing chill that Konoha’s adopted lately. His hands are open on the bedspread, not clenched, and Riku stares at them for a long moment. He’s never considered his uncle’s hands before, but even they look fragile in this moment. These hands that must have (protected) hurt people lay, limp and useless. Except for the expression on Kakashi’s face, he might just be sleeping; except for the rise and fall of his chest, he might have died in pain.

Resolving to come back and check on his uncle as soon as he’s done, Riku follows Asuma’s orders.

Shikamaru’s dad is at home, surrounded by stacks of paperwork when Shikamaru grudgingly escorts Riku into his father’s study. The news that Riku shares gets the same reaction it did the last two times he said it: Nara Shikaku goes ramrod straight for a second and then starts making very quick decisions, dismissing the boys almost immediately.

Shikamaru walks Riku back to his uncle’s apartment, and on the way, gets all the details about what’s going on. After he’s heard everything and seen Kakashi, Shikamaru’s verdict is, “It sounds like Uchiha Itachi is out of everyone’s league. Why the hell is a guy like  _that_ interested in  _Naruto_?”

Riku considers. There’s something that he noticed a while ago that might or might not be relevant, that he hasn’t asked about because there are some answers that he really, really would not be okay hearing. Still, if it  _is_ relevant, he needs to know. “Why do most people in Konoha hate Naruto? Is it just because he’s an orphan?”

Blinking, Shikamaru asks what gave him that impression. Riku explains: all the times people on the street have glared or scowled or frowned at Naruto; comments he gets that are far out of proportion with his actions; times shopkeepers have seemed to up-charge Naruto; the fact that he lives on his own but doesn’t remember his parents at all.

“Huh.” Shikamaru sits down on the same desk Asuma sat on, when Riku first walked into this room today. “I think…I always thought it was the pranks. But it’s bigger than that; he hasn’t pranked anyone since he became a genin, but the reactions are all still there.” Shikamaru stares off into space for several long moments. “I don’t know. It’s  _not_ that he’s an orphan—or not only that, anyway. That isn’t a bad thing, in a village like this.” And his sideways glance at Riku tells Riku that Shikamaru’s now considering whether being an orphan is a bad thing on the  _Islands_ , which. Is not usually the case. Or, anyway, it isn’t the case among decent people, and Riku’s mom always tried to surround them with decent people.

“It seems similar to me,” Riku says slowly, trying to figure out how to put this concept into words that won’t make certain parts of him flinch, “to how it is where I’m from, for bastard kids.” At Shikamaru’s suddenly pole-axed expression, Riku clarifies: “It shows weakness. Or—I mean, morally. A bastard’s what you get when one parent leaves, right, because the kid’s just this walking…symbol, I guess, of how the parents were weak. And usually someone  _else_ has to pick up the slack and help take care of the kid. It’s just all around a bad thing. With orphans, it isn’t really _their_ fault that they’re alone.” Some people still blame them, and there’s the thing where if _one_ of your parents dies, that basically makes you a bastard, but Riku doesn’t really want to get into any of that.

Everyone knows that bastards lead to breakdowns in the community. They take more resources than they contribute for too many years; one bad year and too many bastards, and the town doesn’t have enough to eat. That’s how you get plagues, and pirates, and the failure of the whole settlement. History is littered with tales of bastards destroying towns, either through a collapse from the inside or, when they get tired of having to work for their living, from the outside, as pirates and marauders.

Shikamaru’s eyes have gone narrow and his mouth is distinctly down-turned. “It’s not like that here. No kid in Konoha is just automatically hated.”

“Except Naruto.”

“Yeah,” Shikamaru agrees. “Seems that way.” And he doesn’t say anything else, though he stays with Riku in Kakashi’s apartment until Riku needs to go to the shelter and make dinner for dozens of people he doesn’t know.

///

Riku finds out about the casualties of his actions the next day: Sasuke’s unconscious (just like Kakashi), Kurenai’s suffering from blood loss because she’s been partially flayed (and finding out what _that_ means is horrifying), Asuma may or may not lose an arm and a leg, and Gai’s paralyzed from the legs down, possibly permanently.

They also bring back one of the armsof one of the guys chasing after Naruto, but nothing else.

///

Riku visits Gai in the hospital, but finding a time when the man isn’t either out of it or surrounded by his students is tough. Lee seems to spend most of his days at his teacher’s side, doing his exercises in Gai’s room, wet-eyed and trembling-lipped through all of it. Gai puts a good face on things, tells Lee to take heart and have hope.

“It isn’t fair,” Riku says in a quiet undertone to Tenten, safe in the hallway outside. Gai’s asleep—that’s normal for his sort of injury and the physical therapy he’s going through, according to the medic-nins, but it’s still disquieting. Even worse are Lee’s muffled sobs.

Tenten nods. “Those guys,” and she means both Uchiha Itachi and his partner, because both of their actions led to Gai’s injury, “better hope we never catch up to them.”

Tenten’s never seemed particularly bloodthirsty before, but in this moment, he wouldn’t put cold-blooded murder past her. He doesn’t—it makes Riku uncomfortable to think about, because he doesn’t _blame_ her, even though he still thinks it’s wrong.

///

What Riku finds out about Jiraiya:

  1. “Sannin” is a title that literally means “three ninja.” (Sakura and Shikamaru both look utterly confused when Riku explains that he’s hearing it as all one word, untranslated; Shikamaru then rolls his eyes and calls the whole thing troublesome, while Sakura scribbles down a few notes on a scroll that Riku strongly suspects is titled Weird Riku Things.)
  2. “The Sannin” are called that because they’re the three most impressive ninja of the previous generation.
  3. They were given that title because they apparently impressed some random enemy dude enough that he declared them “legendary.”
  4. Depending on who Riku asks, the Sannin were either almost as good as (Iruka, Sakura, Lee) or slightly better than (Shikamaru, Chouji, Ino, Tenten) his grandfather, Hatake Sakumo.
  5. The Sannin are Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru.
  6. Orochimaru is now the leader of Sound, and he’s the one who killed the Third, his own former teacher.
  7. Tsunade left the village a long, long time ago, and hasn’t been seen since.
  8. She’s the granddaughter of the First Hokage, making her also the grand-niece of the Second Hokage.
  9. Jiraiya taught the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato.



So, okay, that explains why Jiraiya could just waltz out of the village, Naruto in tow, without the guards (Riku…has already forgotten their names, dammit) trying to stop him. That explains why, in a fight with two people who brutalized a handful of powerful jounin, Jiraiya apparently left without any sort of injury whatsoever. Riku hits a wall when he tries to figure out whether Jiraiya by himself will be enough protection against Itachi and his mysterious partner, though.

By all accounts, Jiraiya got to the fight late and didn’t step in until there was literal blood on a literal wall, or else Riku would have written him off entirely just from the fact that Kurenai, Asuma, Gai, and Sasuke all wound up in a hospital from what was a _six-on-two_ fight. Plus, Itachi’s partner will have to compensate for the missing arm, so that could slow the guy down. Whether that’s enough to tip a fight in Jiraiya and Naruto’s favor, though, Riku isn’t sure.

It seems like a lot of ninja have really…isolated legends. Itachi is apparently a genius who captained ANBU at Riku’s age, who could slaughter an entire clan of competent, talented individuals, who’s mastered his clan’s unique techniques and skills. Jiraiya is a genius who’s trained one of the most talented ninja of recent times, who’s mastered multiple disciplines including whatever “sealing” is, who could probably become Hokage himself if he wanted to.

None of that tells Riku whether, in an all-out fight over Naruto, Jiraiya would be able to win.

///

He throws himself into his training: he wakes up an hour earlier, does his normal exercises in the morning (adding more reps any time something seems to come easier), makes food for himself and the shelter, works for about two hours on rebuilding-Konoha projects (mostly lifting beams of wood or metal poles for other people to place), heads over to the hospital for three hours of volunteer work (which doubles as time-to-learn-how-to-read, once he lets Tsuru in on the fact that he mostly  _can_ _’t_ and she starts quizzing him in between tasks), eats lunch somewhere in there, and then heads back for the training ground to practice knife-throwing and his jutsu.

After the fourth day of this, Tenten—who, along with Lee and now Neji, is still using the training ground pretty much every time Riku stops by—brings an extra staff.

“You have enough of the basics down,” she tells him. “Gai would probably hold off for another year, but he’s…” Her face falls, expression darkening and fists tightening. Then she rallies. “Lee could teach you, but I got the sense that you liked weapons. Am I right?”

Riku takes the staff. It weighs a little more than his sword back home, for all that it has much, much more reach. It’s just about his own height, too. “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t  _mind_ learning hand-to-hand or throwing knives, but…”

“It’s not the same as holding a big stick and hitting something, right?” Tenten laughs, and Riku laughs with her, because that is  _exactly_ it.

First, Riku has to prove to  _Tenten_ that he knows how to fall correctly. Then he has to hold the staff correctly. There are three different holds, and once she’s demonstrated and then had him practice them each a few times, she starts calling them out increasingly quickly. Every time he makes a mistake, he runs wind-sprints.

Sweat does  _not_ help matters, and he resolves to bring his gloves the next day.

Before he leaves to make dinner and collapse into bed, she shows him a handful of basic stances, and she doesn’t  _say_ that she’s going to quiz him on them tomorrow, but he strongly gets the sense that she will.

He practices them a couple times, after reporting to the shelter, making dinner, snagging a bowl for himself, and then going back home. He’s tired enough, by that point, to want to just sprawl on his mattress in his filthy, sweaty clothes, but he makes himself shower first.

The nightmares still come. He wakes up in the morning with that same weapon in his hand. He follows his new schedule for another week, taking breaks in it just to check in on Sasuke (no change) and Gai (who, when he isn’t sleeping, tends to be working on physical therapy—and the medic-nins always seem appreciative of another person monitoring him and making sure he doesn’t overdo it).

The first time Riku finds Gai without any of his students around, the man lets Riku know that his uncle would be proud of him.

Riku’s a ninja on a mission, and doesn’t let himself get distracted by his doubts or by how awful it is to see energetic, exuberant Gai sweating through PT. “If I said that the thing I’m most afraid of is hurting my friends,” he asks, all in one burst, “what would you say?”

Gai looks at him with heavy intensity. “Are you afraid of intentionally hurting the ones you care about? Or hurting them accidentally?”

That’s… Riku’s not sure, and sits in silence as Gai completes his PT, considering what _actually_ freaks him out about that scenario.

“Both,” he says, after mulling it over and helping Gai back to his room.

“Then you must train, until you have mastered control!” Gai says, voice far, far too loud for the small hospital room. “And you must practice apologizing, for when your control is not good enough. I have found that it is helpful to include a concrete plan for correction in my apologies! For example, if I have accidentally injured my sparring partner, I will practice that strike correctly a thousand times!” The midday sunlight gleams off Gai’s teeth. “Not only does this demonstrate my sincerity to my sparring partner, but it helps me address the original flaw that caused the injury.”

His smile fades into seriousness. “If the harm is not one that can be practiced away, a challenge for myself may serve as a deterrence. For example! If I have upset one of my students, I will run on my hands on the surface of the river from one side of Konoha to the other! Three thousand times! I am unlikely to repeat this mistake, you see, because the next time I open my mouth, I will remember running on the river.” His smile this time is smaller, more private, not a big production or show. Not that Gai is ever  _in_ sincere, but. “I wonder. What do you think of your uncle, Riku?”

Riku blinks, caught off guard by the sudden turn. “Uh. He’s pretty amazing? I mean, I’ve heard all kinds of stories in the last week.” Gai’s face doesn’t quite fall, but. Dims, maybe. Riku casts about for something, anything, that might be what Gai wants to hear. “I didn’t really get to talk to him much after the invasion, but I know he was worried. About me, I mean. And he got me clothes,” Riku tugs on his shirt, the yellow one Kakashi gave him, “and, I mean, the timing really sucked, but I think he did the best he could.”

Gai doesn’t look ecstatic at this rundown, but he does seem satisfied with it, so there’s that. “I’m glad. I know… Well. I’m sure, once he wakes up, he will prove to be the best uncle in Konoha!” The gleaming smile is back. “He’s very cool and youthful, your uncle! He can succeed at anything.”

That is not true in the slightest, but it might upset Gai if Riku disillusioned him. Best not go there.

///

He makes sure to check in on his uncle, too, and meets…truthfully, more people than he thought Kakashi knew, let alone could be friends with.

There are maybe six people in masks who stop by at one point or another—sometimes, one of them is already in the hospital room when he arrives, sometimes one drops in through the window. When they have masks on, they never talk to him, just look at Kakashi.

Besides them, Riku meets a bunch of people whose names he doesn’t remember, really. Some of them are quiet, like the ANBU, but others want to chat. He hears enough stories about his uncle in the Academy and after to finally believe the Third Hokage’s claim that Kakashi used to be like Sasuke.

Also, apparently his uncle has saved  _a lot_ of people’s lives. Most of his visitors seem really keen that Riku understand how awesome his uncle is. (A couple are really keen that he understand his uncle is  _actually not at all cool_. Yamashiro Aoba, for example, tells Riku a few tales of Kakashi’s social-interaction mishaps, and Shiranui Genma seems to have an encyclopedic memory of every jutsu or weapon that Kakashi messed up with during training.)

///

After a week of staff training, Tenten finally shows up in Riku’s dream—and it is a dream, more than a nightmare. Both are holding the magic weapon, and Tenten calls out stances, only Riku can’t actually hear what she’s saying. He falls into a stance at random, and if he gets it right, she hugs him. When he gets it wrong, a bunch of the shadows from the very first dream jump on him and he has to fight them off.

His dream only makes him do this about a dozen times before letting him wake up, “Riku, the key will always be with you” still echoing in his ears. When he does, he magnanimously leans the magic weapon up next to his staff before dressing and leaving the room for morning exercise. It doesn’t disappear in a flash of light, just seems to wait for him to leave before popping out of existence. It  _is_ gone by the time he gets back to the apartment, but that’s probably for the best. Naruto might be gone for a month, but he might be back sooner, and Riku still doesn’t have any explanation for the thing besides “it’s magic and I dream about it and most of the dreams suck.”

Even for a ninja, he imagines that would be unsettling. Best not to burden Naruto with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and forth on the Itachi-and-Kisame vs everyone-else fight, but in the end, canon establishes that Jiraiya is pretty awesome, Gai can take on Kisame, Asuma is...decent, and Kurenai is ok, while Itachi is DEFINITELY in his own league with most of the heaviest hitters.
> 
> Even considering that Itachi would be trying to take it easy on them, if a bunch of people are coming at him with killing intent, well. No one dies, so that's him going easy on them all. I mean. Any fight where he doesn't Amaterasu or Mangekyou everyone else is a fight where he's going easy. (Yeah, it'd mess up his eyes, but also: everyone else would be _dead_ , so.)
> 
> Here's how it goes down: Kurenai gets hurt badly first while trying to get Naruto away from Kisame, which causes Asuma to go for him; Gai, meanwhile, tries to get in the middle of the Itachi-Sasuke brawl, which is what gets him paralyzed. 
> 
> Jiraiya tries to run interference in both fights by doing the putting-everyone-in-the-stomach thing and succeeds in keeping Kisame from killing either Asuma or Kurenai, but doesn't get to Gai and Sasuke in time to help either of them. Because of Jiraiya stepping in, though, Asuma and Kurenai score a combo-shot on Kisame on his way out, costing him his arm and _nearly_ snagging his sword. 
> 
> I'm giving this summary because I am absolutely not about to write a fight where I have to keep track of _eight people_ all in the same space. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> I'm not going to keep doing back-to-back BN and tbp chapters, but I am considering doing one from Sasuke's POV. Possibly involving a thing that happens in chapter 13. We'll see.
> 
> Also: please note the changes to the metadata for this story. There's a definitely-not-a-date in chapter 14 and I've lowered the chapter count based on my existing outline. It may still fluctuate because a couple of chapters are literally just like...two plot points that need to happen in them and a bunch of question marks, but there you go. We have an endpoint!
> 
> ETA: ok I was so excited to get this up before midnight that I forgot the most important part: THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who reads, kudos's, and comments! Knowing that other people enjoy this story really, seriously keeps me posting it instead of just letting it linger in my head for another eight years. You're all awesome and amazing, and I hope you continue to enjoy this story, especially as we near the end of Part I. :)


	13. Slightly Sinister Magical Universal Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dive to the heart, now with more bystander trauma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha, on the last possible day of the month, I got it done!
> 
> Warnings for **emotions** , including tears and breakdowns; there's **previous trauma** including what's explicitly coded as torture of a child ( ~~the Mangekyou Sharingan~~ Itachi's Tsukuyomi sequence from canon) and resultant **panic attacks** (shown from the outside and not explicitly).
> 
> There's also another original keyblade and a departure from canon that will have some fairly massive effects on much-much-later events. We're now in the endgame, full speed ahead!

It’s not that Riku’s purposefully not trying to figure out the whole mystery-weapon thing, it’s just, well, he’s  _busy_. He has people to feed, errands to run for Tsuru, conditioning, an entire written system to learn (why are there  _three different writing systems_? why do the writing systems have  _different symbols_ with  _different meanings_ for the  _same sounds_?), and Tenten has decided that his biceps aren’t impressive enough and his knuckles aren’t bruised enough for her liking.

So, yeah, the magic weapon is  _not a priority_. Right now, it’s taking a cool fourth place in his list, underneath crises such as:

  1. Kakashi is still unconscious because the murderous brother of one of his uncle’s students basically mentally tortured him, if Riku understands the whole Sharingan-and-genjutsu situation correctly.
  2. Gai is driving the medic-nin insane because, on the one hand, he’s physically fit enough to get around on a wheelchair, and on the other hand, they want to keep him from aggravating and worsening his spinal injury. The medical staff want him in the hospital for observation, while Gai wants to go out and watch his students train. Riku gets _daily_ updates about these shenanigans, including one time when Gai apparently swears that he can walk out of the hospital on his hands, _and then does exactly that_. When Riku manages to get Gai to stay in the hospital for a full 48 hours (mostly through emotional blackmail—after all, what kind of precedent is Gai setting for _Lee_ when he doesn’t listen to the medics? And if he hurts himself worse what will Kakashi say when he wakes up? How will Kakashi _feel_ , knowing Gai got hurt trying to rescue Kakashi’s students?), he receives multiple heartfelt thank-yous and a pastry basket from a particularly harried-looking chuunin.
  3. Sakura has an honest-to-goodness meltdown in Sasuke’s room, and Riku walks right into the middle of it. There are tears. There are self-recriminations. Sakura doesn’t think she’s worthy to be on Sasuke’s team because what has she done to help him? Even _Riku_ got a bunch of jounin to help, and Riku doesn’t even _like_ Sasuke! Riku tries pointing out that all those jounin wound up in the hospital along with Sasuke, so it’s not like he’s been such a great help himself, but then Sakura’s lip wobbles and it turns out that _Ino_ _’s_ been upset about her teacher’s injury, and Sakura for some reason feels personally responsible for all of it. Riku’s _still_ not sure how he talks her down about all of that, because his mouth is on autopilot while he panics over her snotty, tear-streaked red face. (He has the presence of mind to sic Iruka on her, though; he’s not qualified to deal with that, but Iruka is a teacher and these are his former students.)



Still, even busy and distracted as he is, there’s only so many times different people in his dreams can shove something in his hands and then tell him that he has a key before he maybe starts to think there’s a connection there.

When he wakes up, he looks at the thing in his hand. It doesn’t seem  _obviously_ key-like, but if he holds it up and considers the big metal star as the teeth of the key, then the rest of it sort of falls into place.

“Okay, you’re a key,” he tells it, feeling like a person telling a dog “who’s a doggy! You are! Yes, you are!” Stupid, he feels  _stupid_ , but the—key, he supposes, stays in his hand.

“And there’s a door,  _somewhere_ , that’s still shut. Either I’m going insane, or probably all of that is real. Okay.” He takes a deep breath, then another one. The key _feels_ solid in his hand. Lightweight, but real. “Probably that’s connected? Key, door. I got that. But I don’t know  _where_ the door is, so… Why did I get you now?”

The key declines to talk, which is unfortunate and frankly rude on its part. It can magically appear in his hand every morning, but it can’t tell him  _why_? Bad form.

“So, do you just unlock that one door, or is it…every door?” As he says it out loud, it sounds stupid, but like. It’s magic. Maybe it has key magic? Unlocking key magic?

At least that sounds  _testable._ It’s still dark out, so Riku isn’t even that self-conscious about getting up, walking out of the apartment in his pajamas, locking the door, and then pointing the overlarge, weapon-y key at the door.

A bead of light forms at the tip of the metal star, then beams directly at the keyhole. Once it connects, there’s a brighter flash before all the light disappears.

A brighter flash, and the distinct click of the lock disengaging.

Riku walks in, feeling dazed. He has a  _magic universal key_. (Maybe. He needs to test this.) He lives in a  _ninja village_ , he is learning  _a secret written language_ , he’s learning how to _kick ass and take names_ , and he has  _a magic weapon that unlocks everything_. (Maybe.)

He’s a storybook hero. He needs to get ahold of himself. He needs breakfast, and a reality check, and possibly some animal companions.

He frowns. Stories…are not always nice to their heroes. As he gets ready for his day, he keeps casting looks at the key (which he leans against the wall like his staff, even when he’s in the kitchen or bathroom; obligingly, it doesn’t disappear). Magic it may be, but it might not be doing him any  _favors_ , really.

Monkey’s paw stories are some of Selphie’s favoritesfor Scary Campfire Story contests. She likes the fairness in them, she says; if you just put the thing down and don’t engage, nothing bad happens to you!

“Are you a monkey’s paw key,” he asks the key, “or are you a magical sword key?”

It disappears from its spot against the wall and reappears in his hand.

Nonplussed, Riku puts it back and asks, “Are you a magical sword key—” He stops, because it’s in his hand again. “Okay.” Beat. “But an  _evil_ magic thing would definitely  _say_ it wasn’t evil.”

The key disappears, and Riku gets the impression he might’ve offended it.

So he goes about his day as usual, but when he gets home, he sits on his bed and thinks about the key and tries to think very clearly that he’s sorry for implying it’s evil.

Flash of light and it’s in his lap.

He thinks about it going away—temporarily, he’s sure to think of it as, you know, hiding, going into stealth-mode, tucking itself away for a minute—and it goes away. He thinks about it in his hand and it’s there. Standing, he practices his front stance with the key in his hand.

When he thinks about miming a strike empty-handed, the key’s gone; the second he wants it for a block, it’s there.

Definitely a magical key. Magical teleporting universal key.

Riku goes to sleep, and while he does have a nightmare—it’s the one on the beach with Hayashi again—the key isn’t in it. Dream-Hayashi doesn’t say anything about any doors or keys, though she has plenty to tell him otherwise. When he next wakes up, he can’t remember any of it.

///

The village pulls itself together, bit by bit. Riku celebrates two and a half weeks since the invasion by being let go from his cooking gig, on account of a couple buildings getting finished on the same day and everyone in the shelter suddenly having a real home to go home  _to_.

Riku spends his newfound time at the hospital. Tsuru is delighted; she’s taken to tickling him whenever he mixes words up or misidentifies symbols, calling it “negative reinforcement.” A weary-looking medic-nin pulls Riku aside discreetly and asks if he’s being harassed, and Riku gets to explain that no, no, he’s comfortable with being randomly tickled for mixing up his hiragana. By Tsuru’s sudden and otherwise inexplicable dropping of that tactic, he guesses someone talked to her as well.

Tsuru’s solution is worse, because Riku made the mistake early on of complaining about Tenten’s methods to her. Now, Tsuru has Riku do pull-ups when he makes a mistake. She has him do pull-ups  _using the hospital windows_.

Sasuke might be confident in making a four-story drop, no sweat, but  _Riku_ is not. It takes Tsuru demonstrating that she can and will dart outside, run down the side of the wall, and catch him before he even considers it.

His biceps hate him, especially when five o’clock rolls around and Tenten wants him to endlessly practice stances, with his staff, without wavering or slipping his grip or dropping the staff even an inch below where she says it ought to be.

(Riku is doing  _so many pull-ups_ and  _so many wind-sprints_ that he’s resorted to Naruto’s ramen stash a couple of nights, out of exhaustion and desperation. He cracks three eggs into the pot and drops in veggies, but it still doesn’t feel like real  _cooking_.)

///

Around the end of the third week since the invasion, and just under two weeks since Naruto left, Riku swings by Sasuke’s room and finds no one else there. He’s found Ino and Sakura reading in the chair more times than he can count; he’s caught Hinata a few times, talking to Sasuke. Lee’s in there sometimes as well. Occasionally, he’s seen a flash of purple hair, but he’s not really sure why someone who visits Kakashi would also feel the need to check on Sasuke. (He doesn’t know her name, but Purple Hair is a frequent ANBU visitor in his uncle’s room.)

This time, there’s no one. Riku closes the door quietly behind himself and eyes Sasuke. The guy could be dead, except his chest rises and falls. He could be asleep, except his expression is pained. It’s too familiar to Kakashi, who's unconscious the exact same way; Riku hates it.

“Naruto’s going to help,” he tells Sasuke, feeling honestly a little less weird because he’s walked in on Hinata doing the same thing. “You tried to help him. I heard you distracted your brother long enough for reinforcements to get there. Mission accomplished.” He smiles slightly, walks closer.

“You did your best, and Naruto’s going to do  _his_ best. That’s teamwork, right?”

Has Kakashi always known that they could be like that? Riku would have laughed in his face a couple months ago; in fact, Riku’s pretty sure he  _did_ scoff at the whole idea of Naruto and Sasuke getting along. Shows what he knew.

“The Third might’ve been onto something. He had faith in you guys. He’d be proud, I think, seeing you now.”

Riku might believe that this is the bad luck from all those restless Uchiha spirits, except that his uncle’s in a bed just the same as Sasuke. Gai too, and Asuma, and Kurenai’s still on bedrest and hooked up to an IV. The only person to blame for all this is Uchiha Itachi.

“Sakura’s been worried about you. Ino too. My uncle would be, but he’s in the same boat as you.” Riku sits in the empty chair next to Sasuke, a trespasser in someone else’s domain.  _He_ isn’t Sasuke’s teammate; they aren’t really  _friends_. Just acquaintances.

He remembers how freaked out Sasuke looked, the last Riku saw him awake. How concerned for Naruto this kid was. No one who cares about Naruto that much can be a bad person at heart, no matter how big a jerk they seem to be the rest of the time.

“All the medics have come through to try to help. No luck. Whatever your brother did, it’s too strong.” Whatever Itachi did, it’s still happening: Sasuke’s still in pain, for some reason, regardless of how far away Itachi is physically. This isn’t scarring; this is an infection. “You’d think a hospital could treat an infection, but I guess not. You ninja take things way too far.”

Sasuke’s coloring doesn’t help here: Kakashi doesn’t look like death warmed over on the too-white sheets, but Sasuke does. His hair’s grown out since Riku met him, and now, it haloes his face and makes him look sickly.

Riku heaves a sigh. “I can’t even think of anything I could’ve done differently. Going with you wouldn’t have helped any; I might’ve even slowed you down. I told everyone I could. And now, it’s not like  _I_ have healing magic.” Maybe? Maybe his family does, but  _Riku_ doesn’t know any of it. All he has is a magic key.

He chuckles, humorlessly. “Too bad you’re not locked somewhere.  _That_ , I could fix.”

A moment of silence, punctuated by Sasuke’s breathing. A second one. A third.

Riku’s eyes narrow as he considers the body on the bed in front of him.

Isn’t Sasuke  _metaphorically_ locked in his own head? That’s the reason why the medic-nins can’t help: there’s nothing, physically,  _to_ help. Sasuke and Kakashi are physically fine.

“Huh.” He’s been thinking of it as a universal key, but he hasn’t considered whether it works on all locks, or  _anything that could be considered a lock_. There’s…a really big difference between those two concepts. A wall-around-Konoha-sized difference.

And there’s no one in the room with Riku. Just to be sure, he gets up, peeks out the window, and then closes the blinds. Then he sits back down, thinks about the key, and, when it’s in hand, points it at Sasuke’s head.

He thinks  _really strongly_ about the idea that Sasuke is locked in whatever nightmare Itachi gave him. Without knowing what Itachi looks like, Riku’s mental image of the situation is just a sinister silhouette looming over Sasuke, wrapping a chain around his head where his forehead-protector ought to go.

There’s no bead of light. Riku frowns, shaking the key a bit, and tries getting it closer to Sasuke’s head. That’s where the problem is, he tries to tell it, Sasuke’s locked up in there and Riku needs to unlock him. Still nothing.

With a sigh, Riku tries scooting back and aiming at Sasuke more generally—maybe the magic needs more space to function?—and when that doesn’t work, as a last-ditch effort, he tries putting the key in Sasuke’s hand, since _Riku_ woke up from the Chuunin Exam genjutsu with it in his.

There’s a brief flash of light, and when Riku breathlessly jerks his gaze up to Sasuke’s face, he sees that Sasuke’s eyes are open.

And red, with oddly-shaped black pupils.

///

Photo negatives are even worse than funhouse mirrors to Riku; they both distort reality, but photo negatives look like what’s hiding at the back of the closet, underneath the bed, in the twitching shadows in the corner of the room on a stormy night. He’s never walked up and seen himself in one of those mirrors and had the moment of visceral, not-right feeling that he gets, sometimes, looking at photo negatives.

Sasuke’s nightmare is all like that: red sky, black-and-white buildings, black-and-white bodies. Just distorted enough to be unsettling; just real enough to be horrifying.

Riku stays anchored on the street and watches as a child stumbles out of one building. Sasuke at six or seven is recognizable but tiny. (Riku’s thought before, hasn’t he, that child ninja are an awful idea?) As Sasuke makes his way down the street, people appear, only to be cut down as Sasuke calls out their names. The person cutting them down is oddly bright to look at, a young man probably even younger than Iruka, with a sword and a vest and a forehead-protector.

Sasuke screams, “Brother! Stop!” Sasuke screams a lot.

Riku isn’t sure if he can’t move because he’s in someone else’s dream, or if there’s something broken inside himself that won’t let him. He doesn’t reach out for Sasuke. He can’t protect him like this. He just watches, stunned, horrified, until Sasuke wanders off the street. He doesn’t stop hearing Sasuke, though, for a long time.

And then, after several minutes of blessed, wretched silence (does Sasuke die in his dreams, too, or is that just Riku?), Sasuke stumbles out of the house again.

 _No_.

If asked, Riku would swear that he couldn’t move. That doesn’t stop him, when Sasuke cries out for his aunt and uncle, from grabbing the kid and pulling him into a hug. Riku’s not sure if he’ll wake up if he dies in someone _else_ _’s_ dream or what, but it’s better than having to go through all _this_ again. (How many times has Sasuke had this dream? Riku has newfound respect for how well-adjusted Sasuke is— _he_ wouldn’t be, Riku’s sure.)

Sasuke struggles in his arms, but Riku’s thirteen and Sasuke’s, like, a baby. A small child. Whatever. He doesn’t stand a chance. Riku makes sure Sasuke’s head is pressed against his chest and wraps one arm around Sasuke’s back to hold him in place; the other, he uses to awkwardly try to shield Sasuke’s ears. See no evil, hear no evil.

Still, Riku can’t gag him, and wouldn’t want to anyway. Muffled, Sasuke says, “Let me go! He’ll get you, too!”

“Nope.” Glancing around reveals no sign—besides the bodies—of Uchiha Itachi, but why takes chances? Riku shifts his grip on the kid and hoists him up, heading for the exit.

“Let me go let me go let me go let me—” Riku tunes Sasuke out. Sasuke tries to _make_ Riku let him go, but the hitting and the kicking, Riku ignores. Fingers digging into his sides almost make him drop the kid, but he perseveres, tightening his grip and gritting his teeth.

When he hits the edge of the Uchiha section, there’s just—nothing, blackness, void. It’s like Sasuke’s brain can’t process a world beyond this. It’s terribly sad.

Riku keeps his grip firm and steps into that void. The feeling of falling weightlessly is unpleasant, but not a shock to him. Sasuke shouts into his shirt, but Riku still doesn’t let go.

They land—Riku lands—softly, on a stained-glass platform that has a portrait of Riku, this time, in his ninja getup. In one hand, there’s the headband from the first dream, a stylized heart in the center instead of the Leaf symbol; his other hand holds the key. His eyes are closed, and his expression is blank.

When Riku sets Sasuke down, there’s a flash of light, and then it’s not child-Sasuke next to him, it’s the twelve-year-old version.

“What did you do?” Sasuke demands, voice rough.

“Not sure. I was _trying_ to help, but…”

 _The door is still shut_ , a voice echoes, but it’s not the voice from Riku’s dream. It’s _Riku_ _’s_ voice.

Sasuke raises one eyebrow at him. Riku holds his hands up. “I have _no_ idea what that’s about. I don’t know what this place is, or how we got here.” Then he frowns. “What happened with your eyes, anyway?”

“My eyes?”

“Yeah. In the hospital.” Sasuke looks confused, and a little irritated, like Riku’s not making any sense or just making things up. Riku runs a hand through his hair, thinking back. “You opened them, and they were red, with these weird marks. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Pause, a beat. Riku considers saying, _Your brother had the same kind of eyes just now_ , but decides that’s too far.

Understanding crosses Sasuke’s face before he obviously wipes it blank. “The Sharingan. I must’ve…activated it somehow, and pulled you into my…”

“Nightmare?”

Sasuke scowls. “Mind. But what’s _this_?” And he waves an arm at the platform around them.

 _Power sleeps within you_ , Riku’s voice, totally disconnected from Riku himself, spills into the tense silence. _If you give it form, it will give you strength. Choose well_.

Riku’s seen this bit before, so he shuts his eyes in anticipation of the light, opening them as soon as it dims. Sasuke takes a couple seconds longer.

There are, again, three pedestals, though not a knife, a scroll, and a forehead-protector. No, this time it’s a full-length sword (the same kind Itachi had), a much bigger, thicker scroll, and an ANBU breastplate.

Suddenly, Riku gets the feeling that he shouldn’t be here for this. This isn’t for him, even if it’s his voice speaking; he’s already made this choice, so it must be Sasuke’s turn. And Riku being here to watch is _wrong_.

Sasuke doesn’t move, though. Riku has to nudge him to get his attention, and then nod to the pedestals.

“It’s your choice,” he says. “Pick whatever. I’ll just be over here, trying to wake up.”

“So you do know what this is.”

Riku sighs. “I had this dream, the day of the invasion. I don’t think this is for me, though.”

A frown is his only response for a long moment. Then, “It was _your_ voice.”

“And when I had this dream, it wasn’t, so.” A shrug. “I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s for me. I don’t think I should even _be_ here. I was alone when I had this dream.”

Sasuke tilts his head, looking not so much at Riku as _through_ him. He might as well be staring directly into the void. Riku slips down, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the abyss. He’s almost entirely certain he won’t fall. He is certain that, if he falls, he’ll be okay.

“I pulled you in with the Sharingan,” Sasuke says slowly. “What did you do, to wake me up?”

“I don’t think I did,” Riku says. “I mean, your eyes opened, but then when you did—whatever that was—you were still in the dream. My idea didn’t work.”

“What was it?” At Riku’s confused look, Sasuke says, “Your idea. What did you _try_ to do?”

Hesitation, immediate and unexpected. Riku hasn’t told anyone about the key, and if he had to pick a person, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Sasuke. They aren’t even really friends, let alone close friends who share secrets. The key feels like a secret.

Sasuke watches his hesitation with the kind of attention birds of prey give fish. He doesn’t say anything. The silence is pointed.

Another sigh from Riku before he holds out his hand and thinks about having the key in it. When he glances at Sasuke out of the corner of his eye, the other boy is obviously startled, caught off guard by the key’s sudden appearance.

“When I woke up during the invasion, I woke up with this. It…unlocks things. Everything, maybe. I thought it might unlock _you_.” He grins, self-deprecating. “It was a dumb idea.”

The moment stretches, silent and tense again, until Sasuke says quietly, “It worked.” Riku, shocked, turns to look at him head-on, and Sasuke shakes his head, expression slipping from some unreadable emotion back into blankness. “I couldn’t have woken up on my own, and the timing is suspicious. Why would I wake up right when you tried to do something?”

“What’s the deal with the Sharingan,” Riku pronounces the word with slow unfamiliarity, “anyway?”

Sasuke explains, shortly, that it’s his clan’s bloodline ability, that it can create illusions and see through them. After a beat, he adds that he had it activated when his brother attacked him.

“In real life,” Riku asks, more curious than cautious with Sasuke’s feelings, “or in your dream?”

Sasuke gives him a dirty look and turns to face the pedestals. He doesn’t answer. Maybe that’s an answer in itself.

“What’s the point of this?”

Riku shrugs. “I guess the key wants you to pick a path? Like I said, go for whatever.” Then he thinks better of it. “Wait. I don’t need to be here for this.” At Sasuke’s disinterested expression, he clarifies, “It’s personal, and it’s none of my business. Like I said, when I did this, no one else was there watching me.” He tries to find better words for the feeling in his chest and settles on: “It isn’t fair for me to see what you pick. You didn’t choose to bring me here. Can you send me back? With your Sharingan?” He would _not_ want anyone to have been there during his dream, especially once it got to the personal questions.

If Sasuke appreciates that Riku’s trying to respect his privacy here, he gives no sign of it. His irises go red, though, a black wheel with weird marks spinning into existence. It is, just possibly, even more disconcerting than Neji’s weird, all-white bulging eyes.

It takes a couple tries; Riku knows, because Sasuke’s right eye twitches, and his scowl grows a bit more pronounced each time. Finally, though, Sasuke must figure something out, because one moment Riku’s on the stained-glass platform, and the next, he’s drooling on Sasuke’s hospital bed.

The key is gone. He wonders if Sasuke will wake up with it. He debates just leaving—again, they’re not _friends_ , and Sasuke will probably prefer his teammate there when he wakes up. Riku could go find Sakura, convince her to check on Sasuke. He could even just flag down a medic-nin, get the paperwork process started. (Some of what Tsuru and, by extension, Riku have to deal with is keeping on top of all the paperwork their section of the hospital generates. That might be part of Tsuru’s incentive for helping Riku learn how to read, come to think of it.)

Still, Riku stays until there’s a flash of light. The key in Sasuke’s hand isn’t the same as his, though there are similarities. Both keys have a basket hilt, but where Riku’s is silver wire, Sasuke’s looks more like brass, and the design is different, too: no vines, but the guard itself looks a bit like a leaf. The blade comes to a point like a standard sword, but there are weird notches along the sharp side, starting from about halfway up the blade.

Riku has never seen any kind of lock that would take a key like that, but considering there wasn’t a sword in the bed with Sasuke _before_ their little adventure in Dreamland, he’s pretty sure this must also be a key. At least the notches kind of resemble a key’s teeth.

Shortly after the key appears, Sasuke himself wakes up. His eyes are their usual black color when he does, and he looks groggy when they first open. He rubs at one with his free hand, the other clenching, white-knuckled, around the hilt of the key-sword.

“So,” Riku says, only mostly sure that he didn’t hallucinate the whole thing, “you remember any of that?”

Sasuke jerks his head to stare at Riku, then turns his gaze to the sword (it looks _way_ more like a sword than a key, notches or no notches) in his lap. Without a word, he lifts the sword and points it at the door.

Riku isn’t even sure there _are_ locks on the hospital doors, since they all slide open, but he sees the beam of light and hears a click, and when he gets up to try to open it, he can’t. With a thought, he summons his own key and taps the door gently. Another flash-and-click, and he can slide it again.

Poking his head out reveals that the hallway is empty, which is no good. Over his shoulder, he tells Sasuke, “I’ll let a medic know you’re awake,” and leaves.

When he does, the commotion his announcement causes provides the perfect cover to slip into his uncle’s room. Kakashi is alone for once, and Riku repeats his precautions of lowering the blinds and closing the door (he could lock it, but that would seem suspicious to anyone trying to get in—he checked, there’s no actual locking mechanism, so however the key locks the door, it definitely isn’t _normal_ ). Then he approaches his uncle’s bed and skips straight to putting the key in his uncle’s hand.

This time, the flash of light disappears and leaves the key back in Riku’s grip and his uncle still unconscious. With a frown, Riku tries again, and again, and again.

No luck. Maybe the Sharingan is a necessary part of it working? Maybe something’s just fundamentally different between his uncle and Sasuke. (There are a lot of differences between them, of course, but Riku can’t think of any that would make a method work for Sasuke and not Kakashi. Then again, it isn’t like he really _knows_ how the key works, anyway.)

By the time he gives up, Ino’s prowling the halls looking for him. She spots him as soon as he leaves Kakashi’s room and pounces, leading him with an iron grip on his wrist back to Sasuke’s room and telling him the good news on the way.

“No one knows how he did it, but it’s _probably_ the Sharingan.” Her grip tightens—in excitement, Riku thinks. “He’s so awesome! I knew even someone like his brother couldn’t keep him down for long!”

Desperately hoping that Sasuke keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t mention the key to anybody—probably a safe bet, Sasuke seems like a private, close-mouthed person—Riku pretends to be equally shocked and amazed. It doesn’t take much doing; Ino doesn’t pay him any attention at all, just tows him along as she talks.

There’s a small crowd in Sasuke’s room when they get there, with Sakura at the heart of it, along with a gratifying number of medics. They aren’t taking Sasuke’s recovery lightly, and even as Ino and Riku approach, a couple genin start shooing everyone else away. One starts to turn Ino away, the determined set to the boy’s mouth showing that he’s ready for the fight written all over Ino’s face, when Riku switches their grip and tugs _her_ along.

“She’s with me,” he says, starting to move past the other genin.

“No visitors are—” he starts, but gets cut off by Tsuru, who sweeps in and says, “There you are! I was looking _everywhere_ for you…two. Come here!”

The genin boy scowls, but Tsuru’s expression promises trouble if he gets in her way. Riku’s in the dark about what she did before conscripting him as her errand-boy, but he gets the impression that it _wasn_ _’t_ “be nice and get along with everybody.”

They’re told to stand quietly for what feels like an hour (Tsuru leaves as soon as the other genin do, whispering that Riku owes her one) while the medics put Sasuke through a battery of tests, but by the end of it, they release Sasuke into “supervised care.” The head jounin, a woman missing one eye and any kind of softness in her soul, says, “We don’t recommend living independently for at least a week. If you relapse without anyone around, you may not be brought back in time. Permanent brain damage is a likely outcome in that scenario.”

“He can stay with Riku,” Ino volunteers, which is rich of her. At Riku’s skeptical look, she says, “What? You’re used to sharing. It’s not like Sakura or I can just invite him over.”

“It’s not my apartment,” Riku protests, when he really wants to say, “I barely know this guy and I don’t think I like him that much, actually.”

Sasuke’s silent throughout this exchange. When the medic-nin turns to him and asks, “Alright, what’s your decision? Stay here or go with them?” he says, “I’ll go.”

His legs are a little shaky. Sakura doesn’t offer to help, just stands next to him and holds onto his arm. (He adjusts his grip so that he leans some of his weight on her without looking too obvious about it; if Riku wasn’t specifically watching for that, he probably wouldn’t notice.)

Ino makes a production out of a promise to tell Sakura’s mom where she is before abandoning Riku with his uncle’s students. They walk quietly out of the hospital, Sakura filling Sasuke in on what he’s missed since he was knocked out in a calm undertone.

They’re less than a block from the hospital when she turns to Riku and asks, “Who was it that Naruto’s training with?”

“Jiraiya, one of the Sannin,” he replies on autopilot, before adding with deliberation, “According to Gai, Naruto’s really focused on bringing some hotshot medic-nin back to help Sasuke.” A pause. “And Kakashi.”

“I’m sure he’ll be disappointed that Sasuke got better on his own!” Sakura giggles. “He was probably looking forward to rubbing it in Sasuke’s face.”

Riku tips his head to one side, puzzled. It’s the sort of thing he’d expect Ino to say, but not Sakura. Is it because she hasn’t really interacted with Naruto in so long—a couple of weeks, now, but also the whole month during the Chuunin Exam when Naruto disappeared, with barely any time in between for them to really talk? Or is this Sakura’s normal opinion of Naruto, and it’s just never come up because Naruto’s been gone?

It’s weird, when _he_ _’s_ defending someone he doesn’t know all that well to someone who ought to know the guy better. “If he’s disappointed, it’ll be because he wasn’t here when Sasuke woke up.”

The two of them stare at him. Sakura visibly falters, while Sasuke seems to be processing how he _should_ react to that statement.

Riku doubts whatever reaction they’re about to have will be positive. His conversation with Shikamaru comes to mind. Naruto’s teammates _ought_ to be beyond whatever it is that’s soured the rest of the village on the kid, but maybe that’s asking too much. They grew up here, after all; Riku didn’t. It’s not really fair to expect them to rise above a situation he doesn’t even fully understand himself.

“My uncle’s still unconscious, though,” he says, instead of any of the other things pressing to come out of his mouth. His mom would be proud. (Kairi would be disappointed, but Kairi tends to believe in a frontal approach to interpersonal problems. Riku dealt with most of his own and Sora’s and Tidus’s bullies, growing up, but the few Kairi dealt with _stayed_ dealt with, because there wasn’t much they could do to get the mayor’s tiny, seventy-pounds-soaking-wet daughter in trouble for blacking their eyes. They couldn’t even try to pin it on anyone else because Kairi would happily take the blame and make sure _everyone_ knew why she thought it necessary to punch that kid in the face.) “It’s not like Naruto’s wasting his time. If the medic’s as good as everyone says she is, she’ll be able to fix Gai’s legs and Asuma’s arm, too.” It occurs to Riku that Kurenai’s team all made it to the finals, and now, of all the jounin, Kurenai had the least severe injuries. He resolves, if he gets a chance, to see if he can train with _her_ team; she must be doing something right, or have some awesome luck.

///

In the end, Sasuke doesn’t move in with Riku, but Riku does spend the week with Sasuke.

While there are several empty rooms in Sasuke’s house, when Sasuke directs Riku to prep the couch to sleep on, Riku doesn’t protest. He’s about ninety percent sure this is the same house Sasuke stumbled out of in their dream, and critical thinking tells him it’s probably the house Sasuke grew up in. You know, where his dead mom and dad and his murderous brother lived. Riku’s not sure, of those options, which is worse, so he doesn’t say a single thing as he gathers blankets and pillows together.

Sasuke can cook, at least, but Riku supervises; Sasuke’s mostly okay, but sometimes his grip fails, or he starts hyperventilating. On his next shift, Riku tracks down the jounin from when Sasuke woke up—Honda Nao, which he will probably not remember—and asks about that.

It turns out, those are called panic attacks, and the description strikes close to home for Riku.

His own methods of dealing with them—even though he didn’t know what they were called, or why they happened—don’t seem to work too well for Sasuke. Trying to snap him out of it with an overwhelming smell is useless, and while he has some success getting Sasuke to count breaths, what seems to work better is just…asking him questions.

Sasuke, it turns out, is way more analytical than Riku could have guessed. Half the panic attacks have roots in him just over-thinking the entire situation, from the key not working on Kakashi (Sasuke doesn’t come out and _say_ that he’s worried that his brother messed Kakashi up harder than anyone guessed, but that’s the impression Riku gets from him) to the possibility that his brother will come back for Naruto when there _aren_ _’t_ three jounin and a Sannin there to protect him.

Riku sees some parallels between Sasuke’s panic attacks and Sakura’s meltdown. He wonders if Naruto is, secretly, the most stable member of his uncle’s team.

Riku’s days start even earlier, because Sasuke wakes up with the sun. He starts training almost as soon as he can stand, shifting just about every hour from one form of practice to another. Jutsu practice is a lot of fireballs (which Sasuke refuses to teach Riku, the jerk) and walking up trees or over water (is there anything chakra _can_ _’t_ do? …Besides fix his uncle and Gai?)—those last two, Sasuke doesn’t so much _teach_ Riku as he grudgingly narrates how they’re done, as if he’s thinking out loud about skills that he’s clearly working toward mastering. Sasuke does coach him on his throwing (Riku’s lack of skill still seems to physically pain Sasuke). All that eats up Riku’s mornings, and then he heads for his shift at the hospital.

Tsuru’s favor hangs over his head. She refuses to call it in and refuses to tell him what she’s planning on asking him for. She still helps him with his characters, though, and he’s doing fewer pull-ups these days.

Lunch sees him back at Sasuke’s house, to make sure Sasuke hasn’t collapsed in a puddle of drool and brain damage while Riku was gone. (He tried to get Sasuke to come with him to the hospital, and got back a flat _fuck no_ , which he doesn’t bother arguing with.) Sometimes Sasuke makes lunch, sometimes Riku does; often, there’s a visitor—usually Sakura, Ino, or both, but sometimes Hinata as well.

Hinata, it turns out, is painfully quiet. She’s nice—interacting with her more jogs his memory, and he distinctly recalls a positive first impression—but she’s incredibly timid. When Riku asks why she’s wasting her time on Sasuke (he doesn’t ask _like that_ , but Sasuke’s glare says that he isn’t subtle, regardless), Hinata pushes her index fingers together and stares at the table.

“Ah, when the invasion happened, Sasuke and Shikamaru and I went after Naruto,” she finally says, stuttering over the names a bit. “Sasuke saved me.”

“ _Naruto_ saved you,” Sasuke corrects, glowering into his teacup. “I was just there.”

Hinata’s head snaps up, expression fierce. “I was there. Naruto _did_ save both of us, but so did you. If you hadn’t distracted Gaara, we’d both be dead.”

Sasuke just shrugs. Riku’s never gotten the sense that Sasuke’s particularly humble, but now he wonders. “We were teammates on a mission, that’s all. You helped attack him too.” He tilts his head, eyes raising to meet hers. “Your water jutsu wasn’t bad.”

Maybe this is why she’s wasting her time with Sasuke: nine times out of ten, he’s a jerk, but if he tells you you’re good at something, you _believe_ it, _because_ he’s such a jerk all the time. He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it, if it wasn’t true. With Sasuke, there’s no chance that he’s being nice or trying not to hurt your feelings.

Hinata beams and goes cherry-red. “Th-thank you! I worked hard to learn it.”

A water jutsu. When Sasuke spends a good forty minutes each day doing his level best to perfect his _fire_ jutsu. Riku grins. “Did you learn it for the exam?”

Hinata nods, ducking her head. “N-not that it did any good.”

“You didn’t know I was learning lightning jutsu,” Sasuke tells her with a disinterested air. “Most Uchiha have a fire affinity.”

“Affinity?” That’s a new word. Riku glances from Sasuke, who decides that now’s the perfect time to clear all their plates from lunch, to Hinata, smiling softly and down to just a light pink flush.

“Chakra affinity,” she tells him. “It determines which nature transformations you’re most comfortable using.” At Riku’s blank look, she says, “Different techniques can have different nature transformations. If you release fire elemental chakra while using the clone jutsu, you create a clone out of fire. Or, if you already know a fire technique and you have a fire affinity, it’s stronger and works better for you.” She flushes darkly and pushes her fingers together again. “D-does that make sense? I’m not a teacher, I know I probably didn’t do a good job explaining…”

“No, it makes sense,” Riku says slowly. “How do you know what your affinity is?”

He’s twenty minutes late when he gets back to the hospital, but Hinata’s promised to get him some chakra litmus paper and explained the basic principles of each of the different kinds of nature transformations, so he counts it as a win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The keyblade here is based on [a classic](https://www.abloyshop.co.uk/abloy-keys-84-c.asp) [Abloy key](http://www.abloyusa.com/key_control.htm), which is _really really_ [hard to pick](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abloy) without a special Abloy-lockpicking tool. It seemed like a good fit for Sasuke! (Also, you're not supposed to notch blades because it causes some pretty horrific damage on the way out--as in, notching bayonets was outlawed for this reason. So. You know. Sasuke's keyblade being like that says some things about his character at this point in time.)
> 
> Originally, as in, back when I first-first wrote this fic, the plan was not for Sasuke to get a keyblade. Since then, among other things, _Birth by Sleep_ came out, and I refined a lot of my headcanons re: the keyblade. I decided, based on that, that Sasuke _at this point in time_ would be able to keep the keyblade, but Kakashi wouldn't. (There are other points in their lives where Sasuke wouldn't be able to hold onto it and Kakashi would.) 
> 
> Will this change other events? Yep! Now that Sasuke's got the keyblade, he'd have to be very shaken to lose it (and, per KH1, would still be able to get it back--and falling to darkness in and of itself wouldn't cut it, as we see with Xehanort and even canon!Riku). Should Riku be handing this thing out to people? I mean...he doesn't know any better.
> 
> Also, as a note, I'm almost sure that this fic will finish with 16 chapters and maybe an epilogue. There's one more mini-arc after this to round out Riku's character development and get all the pieces in place for KH1 and the Shippuden timeskip. :) :) :)
> 
> As always, kudos and comments give me life. When I'm planning out the next part, I'm going to go back through and clean this fic up, and I'm definitely taking everyone's comments into account for that!


	14. Mood Whiplash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know how, on a rollercoaster, there's sometimes one last drop right as your heartbeat's starting to slow down and you're catching your breath? Yeah. This is that chapter.
> 
> Mostly, though, it's just a cute not-a-date chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the last arc, everyone! This is it, the beginning of the end. :D
> 
> Some content notes: there's a not-a-date hangout; some violence; a potentially life-threatening situation. Also, I feel that this is the appropriate time to acknowledge that, while I won't be using the vast majority of the anime's... _extensive_ filler plotlines, I will occasionally draw on them.

“Come on, you _have_ to come with me!” Ino says, draping herself on top of Riku when he tries to walk away. “I don’t have anyone else to go with!”

Naruto and Jiraiya made it back to the village with the medic-nin in tow. Kakashi’s awake, Asuma’s arm is good as new, and Konoha is preparing for its new Hokage. The second-worst part of the whole affair was the narrow-eyed look Tsunade turned on Sasuke when she heard that he just _woke up_ from his brother’s attack.

Sasuke’s sticking to that story, though. And, since he’s been checked out, Riku’s no longer required stay with him. (He already misses having someone else make breakfast, but a promise is a promise and Riku got Sasuke to teach him how to make ramen before moving back into Naruto’s apartment. There’d been a very long, tense, awkward moment when he thought Sasuke was going to refuse, or say he didn’t know how, but instead Sasuke simply rolled his eyes and got started with zero warning and few directions.)

The worst part, of course, is that Gai isn’t fixed yet. The legendary medic-nin shooed all the kids away, but they’re _genin_ ; Neji lip-read her from two halls over and promptly reported back that the procedure has a fifty-fifty chance of success.

Lee’s been doing compulsive laps around the village. Riku’s ninety percent sure that that’s his weird version of plucking petals off a flower: if he can run for eight hundred laps, the surgery will be successful; if he can do a thousand push-ups, the surgery will be successful; if he can walk the length of the wall on his hands, the surgery will be successful. If he can’t…

Tenten seems calmer, but that’s all surface. She doesn’t spar with Riku—they both know better than that—but she pushes him harder these days than she did initially. The consequences for messing up are harsher, and she keeps him out later with more reps. Tsuru flat-out tells him to come in an hour later from now on because he’s lost so much sleep. It’s not on purpose, Riku knows, or anyway, it’s not malicious, so he sucks it up and follows Tenten’s directions.

He still gets the nightmares, and the key is still absent from them. He can summon it with a thought, but if he doesn’t for a few days, it doesn’t seem to mind.

The Academy is open again, and since he’s a genin, Riku can take missions. Just for practice, he takes a few around the Academy, sometimes organizing things, sometimes running errands. He makes sure none of them interfere with his time at the hospital, of course, but that’s volunteer work, and it turns out that Riku likes getting paid.

The first meal he makes that he paid for with only his own yen tastes extra delicious.

So now the village is resettling, mostly picked up and glued back together. There are scars, of course, but life goes on.

And Ino has two tickets to a movie and no one to go with her, apparently.

“Ask Sasuke,” Riku suggests.

Ino’s lip wobbles. “I don’t _want_ to go with Sasuke. I want to go with _you_.” At Riku’s incredulous look, she sighs and lets him go. “Alright, Sasuke would say no in a heartbeat. But! I’m being honest; I want you to come with me. You haven’t taken a break at _all_ since the invasion. That can’t be healthy!”

Tsuru has been making similar comments, and Riku wonders if the two colluded on this. He wouldn’t put it past either of them. He sighs. “What movie is it?”

Ino takes that as surrender—and she’s right, unfortunately—and latches onto him again, this time for a proper hug. “Oh good! I knew you’d say yes! It’s called _The Adventure of Princess Gale_. I’ll pick you up at your apartment at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow, okay? See you!”

And she’s off. Riku feels a little like he’s been press-ganged into something, and what’s worse, _he doesn_ _’t know what it is_. He trudges off to his shift with Tsuru, but instead of explaining it, she laughs at him for a solid two minutes before thumping his back and promising to explain his absence to the head chuunin.

Ninja are all weird and possibly insane.

///

Naruto takes advantage of Riku’s promise and begs for ramen at every meal. In response, Riku’s started a sloppily-written grocery list on the fridge, and without fail comes back from training or the hospital or wherever to find that the list has materialized into ingredients in his absence.

Naruto doesn’t even protest the vegetables that Riku writes on the list. Naruto _buys the vegetables_. Riku’s chalking this one up as a win.

Tsuru did finally break down and tell him that he’d inadvertently agreed to a date, and unless he wants Ino to be upset, he ought to dress like it. He doesn’t exactly believe her, but he doesn’t _dis_ believe her, either—with a different girl, he might’ve protested the lack of _asking him out and calling it a date_ , but these are _ninja_. Maybe that’s just how they do things here?

Of course, Tsuru could just be messing with him, too. He hasn’t ruled that possibility out.

On the off chance that it _is_ actually a date, though, he decides it can’t hurt to dress nicely. That eliminates a solid half of his clothes: either they have bloodstains (because he wore them to his volunteer gig) or holes (mostly from training), or they don’t quite fit right. Maybe Ino likes showing off her abs, but Riku’s been acutely aware of the temperature ever since it started dipping over a month ago, and he is _not_ about to wear anything outside if it doesn’t cover his belly and at least part of his arms. Also, some of his shirts have been banished to Naruto’s dresser because they just plain don’t fit over his arms anymore.

Given this state of affairs, the best he can do is a black shirt (no holes, no bloodstains, boring as can be but not _offensive_ in any way) and black pants (no holes, no bloodstains, some kind of thick material that isn’t denim, and they cost him about as much as four meals but they _fit_ and they’re _warm_ ), along with a dark grey scarf.

In all black, he feels a bit like he’s going to another funeral or dressing up like Sasuke. If this proves anything, it’s that he really needs to invest more of his munny into clothing; his mom would sigh and sigh if she ever found out he only has _one good outfit_ and it’s almost all black.

When Ino picks him up, she’s dressed normally, so Riku mentally pats himself on the back: Tsuru was evidently wrong. (Even Riku, with entirely secondhand knowledge of the process, knows that no one goes on a date in their regular clothes. Granted, Ino’s clothes are nice and cute and not in any way ripped or stained, but they’re not _date clothes_.) Riku would feel even more self-conscious about how colorful her outfit is compared to his, but he literally does not own a shirt that _has_ color and _doesn_ _’t_ have holes or stains, so. There’s not a lot he can do about it on short notice.

Her perfume is a lot more understated than usual, just a hint of jasmine. That has _got_ to be on purpose, and probably means she’s talked about him to Sakura, because Sakura knows how sensitive his nose is, but most people don’t.

Ino pauses, eyeing him as he locks the apartment. Because it’s obvious that he misread her invitation? (Thanks a _lot_ , Tsuru.) Because he looks horrifically awkward? Because she’s never seen him all in black before? The look on her face when he turns around is a little terrifyingly predatory, and Riku doesn’t know what to do with it.

“You look _great_ ,” she says, grabbing his hand and walking him down the stairs. “You should wear dark colors more often.”

While Riku isn’t the _most_ fashionable, he likes to look nice; his mom doesn’t pick out his clothes anymore, but she comes along with him and offers her opinion when he asks for it. Or she did, anyway, when he bought clothes on the Islands. From those conversations, Riku knows that he should _not_ make a habit of wearing dark clothes: they wash him out, make him look paler than he already does (paler than most people on the Islands, but a couple shades darker than most people here in Konoha). Especially now, when he’s consistently running short on sleep, dark colors bring out the bags under his eyes and make his hair stand out.

Maybe that’s what Ino means, though. On the Islands, there were a riot of hair colors among kids his age: blonde and red and brown and black and dozens of shades in between. On his best day, in the most favorable light, Riku could maybe, charitably, be lumped in with the lightest of the blondes.

Here in Konoha, there are a small handful of people with hair like his, not least of them Kakashi. People know who he is at a glance, but they don’t usually whisper when they notice him. No one treats him like bad luck just for existing.

So. Maybe dark colors are okay, here. Riku’s always been partial to black and dark blues, paired with yellows and lighter blues. It’s something to keep in mind, anyway.

“Tsuru thought I had a date,” he says conversationally, one eye on the road (he’s getting better about remembering how to get to and between places, and while he’s not a big moviegoer, now that he has his own munny, he might want to go on his own sometimes) and one eye on Ino’s reaction.

Her cheeks pink, a little, but she also rolls her eyes. What does that even mean?

“Tsuru is a busybody who ought to worry about her _own_ dates,” Ino says, her grip on his hand tightening in contradiction of her light tone. “Trust me, when I ask you out, _you_ _’ll know_.”

They’re friends—Riku considers her one, anyway, and figures you don’t drag just some acquaintance to see a movie—so he teases, “‘When’? Should I be worried?”

She looks at him, eyebrows raising for a moment before her expression goes determined-and-challenging. “About _dating_ me? Why would you be—unless you’re worried that you’re not good enough for a bombshell like me.”

Her tone’s playful and her hand holding his isn’t crushing him anymore, so he figures it’s fine to keep teasing. “Well, I _meant_ that you’d eat me up and spit me out, but sure. Let’s go with ‘not good enough.’ _Is_ there anybody good enough? I mean, besides Sasuke?”

She jabs him in the side with her elbow, maintaining her hold on his hand for continued access, and laughs at his squawk of pain. “Hey! I’m not that kind of girl!”

Ino is _exactly_ that kind of girl, Riku thinks, but maybe they’re talking about different things. (Do ninja date like people do on the Islands? Because Riku can easily picture Ino going through half-a-dozen guys, dating them until she gets bored, but maybe that’s not how it is here.)

“And anyway,” she sniffs, not letting him get in a conciliatory word, “I guess you’re okay. I mean, you’re cute, you get along with Sakura, you’re not stupid or weird or lazy or basically my brother.” Riku’s pretty sure she’s ruling out a bunch of guys in that sentence; in fact, he’s pretty sure she’s ruling out _all the genin boys her age_ in that sentence. “And we already _know_ we get along.” (That seems like a generous overstatement—they’ve had some conversations, sure, but it isn’t like they hang out all the time. This is the first time they’ve really done anything together without Sakura, which was a solid 75% of why Riku bought Tsuru’s bullshit about this being a date in the first place.) “So it could happen. Unless you’re gonna be worried about it, then just forget it.” And she concludes with a serene smile that just about sends a shiver down his spine.

Besides that time with the late Hokage, this is the most wildly unprepared Riku’s ever felt for a conversation. “Oh. Uh. Good?”

She frowns at him. “Of _course_ it’s good. Who wouldn’t want to date me?”

Wrong-footed in the conversation and trying, probably a little harder than he should, to pull it back to shore, Riku asks, “Besides Sasuke?”

He deserves the _thwap_ that earns him. Given her performance against what’s-her-face, the Sand nin, Ino’s not actually mad at him, just play-fighting.

“You—!” He dodges away from her elbow, almost bowling over a couple kids who shoot dirty looks at both him and Ino.

She recaptures him after that, hand tight around his elbow, “to keep you from endangering anyone else.” He rolls his eyes and lets her.

Maybe Tsuru _was_ onto something. For all of Ino’s “when I ask you out, you’ll know,” this feels a bit like a date. Maybe a pre-date?

He’s not complaining, though.

As they walk, Ino regales him with Academy stories, mostly of various boys playing pranks or doing stupid things. To hear Ino tell it, the girls _never_ did anything foolish or ill-considered, which is complete bullshit and even Riku knows it. If he wants to hear those stories, though, he’d probably need to go to one of the boys—and, problematically, he gets the impression from what Ino does tell him that Naruto was almost certainly not physically present when the girls messed up. Neither, from the sounds of it, were Shikamaru, Chouji, or Kiba (dog-kid, Riku realizes when Ino mentions his puppy).

Sasuke would’ve been, but Riku has met Sasuke. There is only the slimmest chance that Sasuke was _mentally_ present for any of the girls’ shenanigans. (Maybe Hinata would know? But then getting _Hinata_ to spill becomes the problem…)

Well. It’s something to consider another day. It might be funny to learn something and just mention it, off-hand, if Ino ever actually does ask him out.

The only movie-theater on the Islands that Riku knows about is far away; it’s a day trip, so he’s gone a handful of times, usually for someone’s birthday (not his). The one Ino takes him to looks outwardly similar, and the inside is different in only small, unsettling ways.

There’s no shave ice, for one thing; instead, the concession stand seems to be selling some kind of _fish_ , although Ino tugs him along before Riku can investigate. (Which is probably for the best: he doesn’t have to smell his own fish-breath, and even if this isn’t a date, they’re going to be sitting next to each other for however long the movie is.)

The theater mostly smells like a theater—popcorn, sugar-residue from long-spilled soda, grilled meat and other snacks—and, courtesy of his scarf, Riku filters most of that out with little problem. When Riku catches a particular set of scents, though, he glances toward the entrance.

“Something wrong?” Ino asks.

Riku raises an eyebrow at her. “Did you know Sakura would be here? With Naruto and Sasuke?”

From Ino’s sudden blush, the answer is _no_. She sinks down in her seat and tries to survey the entrance without being obvious about it. “That _brat_. Where is she?”

Riku can’t figure that out himself—nearby, definitely, not just in the same room but within a couple rows of them. Not along the same row, though, or else Ino or Riku would’ve spotted either Sakura or Sasuke’s distinctive hair. More concerning is that neither of them can hear Naruto.

Riku would bank on the fact that Naruto won’t want his homemade-ramen supplier to stop supplying him in a fit of pique, but Kakashi’s team is going on a long mission soon, and Riku wouldn’t put it past Naruto to get in a little revenge for Riku making him eat vegetables. What that revenge will look like, Riku isn’t sure—if there’s one thing that’s clear from Ino’s stories, it’s that Naruto is probably more creative than Riku is, at least when it comes to pranks and having fun.

The lights go down before Ino and Riku find even a hint or clue as to their friends’ whereabouts, so they’re both tense and not paying the screen any attention through the trailers. By the time the credits begin, they’ve relaxed a bit, but Riku twitches every time he hears shuffling or footsteps, and out of the corner of his eye he notices Ino scanning the room every few minutes.

They’re a good ten, fifteen minutes in before they dare sink into their seats and start whispering to each other. There are couples and large families all around them, but there’s also a pair of little kids in the row behind that have already started chattering and kicking seats, so they have some cover from the other moviegoers’ ire.

“She was supposed to come later,” Ino tells him, pressed against his side. Konoha’s still too cold for Riku’s liking, and the theater seems to be air-conditioned for a middle-of-summer heatwave, not the crisp start-of-fall temperatures outside. The warmth of Ino’s arm against his is unexpected but very welcome. “She promised me she exchanged her ticket. Damn it!” Ino’s hiss gets a dirty look from the couple in front of them, and she mouths an apology before leaning even closer into Riku. “I didn’t think she’d do that. Ugh. I can’t _believe_ her sometimes.”

A piece of popcorn drops into his scarf. Both Riku and Ino freeze. In slow motion, Ino’s face tilts up, and up, and up. The movie casts grey-blue shadows over her profile, the column of her neck, and he can see the moment she spots Sakura and her team, because Ino’s face freezes and then snaps down, expression shifted to _bloody murder_.

Riku wonders if her revenge will include Sasuke, or if she thinks this is all Sakura and Naruto. (Riku highly doubts Naruto could talk Sakura into any sort of mischief. On the other hand, if it was _Sakura_ _’s_ idea, Naruto would leap on the chance. Riku suspects that Sasuke’s getting back at him for needing a minder, even though that was the medic-nin’s decision, not Riku’s.)

“They’re on the ceiling,” Ino whispers. “ _Right above us_.”

Riku tips his own head back. Sakura is giggling at them. Naruto _winks_. Sasuke’s the only one holding popcorn.

“Can they hear us like this?” he whispers back, close to her ear. Close enough to see her shiver, which sends heat over his whole face.

Then Ino shakes her head, and Riku grins. “Your thing is eye contact, right?”

The grin that Ino returns is sharp and approving.

///

They get kicked out twenty minutes before the end. Riku watches most of the movie with Ino’s head tucked into his shoulder; ninja-movies have better special effects than the ones back home, but the plot isn’t as good. Maybe that’s his lack of focus, though, because every other minute, his gaze returned to the ceiling, where Ino-in-Sakura’s-body wreaked _some_ kind of havoc on Naruto and Sasuke.

Riku’s not totally sure what she _did_ as Sakura, but Naruto’s still red-faced, and even Sasuke looks frazzled. Sakura herself seems caught between irritation and contriteness. Irritation is winning.

He’s pretty sure the shiny patch on Naruto’s cheek is Sakura’s lip-gloss. He’s _not_ sure how Sasuke’s hair got messed up, but it’s probably related. Both boys are still shaking popcorn out of their clothes, and even Sakura has a couple kernels stuck in her hair and falling out of her dress when she moves.

“It was just a little prank,” Sakura says, which confirms it was her idea. “Lighten up.”

“Are you sure you wanna go out with a girl like that?” Naruto stage-whispers to Riku, and then yelps and ducks behind Sasuke when Ino turns a fire-and-brimstone look his way. As soon as she turns back to Sakura, he says, “Seriously though!”

Riku shrugs. “It wasn’t a date.” That earns him three incredulous looks—even Sasuke sends him one, before his face melts back into indifference.

“You’re just sore because you can’t _get_ a date,” Ino tells Naruto, with more venom than the comment warrants. Riku shoots her a frown, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “What? He is and he can’t.”

“He’s sore that you dumped half a bucket of popcorn down the back of his shirt,” Riku says, “and that we ruined Sakura’s prank by getting back at them. Besides, you’re making it sound like it _was_ a date.”

Ino goes a bit pink, and Naruto looks like he did when Riku handed him his first homemade breakfast: a little wary, a lot disbelieving, and eyes-shining-with-it _delighted_.

“So, you know, sorry for ruining your prank,” he says, moving his attention and the conversation back to Sakura, before either Naruto or Ino can get too self-conscious—Ino, he thinks, can be vicious when she feels cornered, and Naruto goes brittle and puts on a smile like a shield. “I thought you had a mission, though. Is my uncle late again?”

“Perpetually,” Sakura says with a sniff. “He told us to see the movie for our mission, but he didn’t tell us why.”

“Huh.” Riku thinks over the movie plot, but, “It’s a fictional movie, right? Is it about the place you’re going?”

“Who knows. That’s as good a guess as any.” Sakura sighs and shakes her head. “You know, sometimes I think _you_ _’re_ more responsible than him. I mean, you’ve been taking care of Naruto _and_ yourself—”

“Hey! Don’t say it like that!”

“—and,” Sakura continues smoothly, “you’ve barely been here a couple of months and you’re already on a date! I’ve _never_ seen Kakashi on a date. Does he even have a girlfriend?”

“How should _I_ know?” For all Riku knows, Kakashi could be married. “And we already told you, it’s not a date.” He pauses, because a good zinger needs time to build. “Unless going to the movies is _always_ a date. Which would mean…” He trails off, and looks pointedly from her to Naruto, then to Sasuke and back.

Ino laughs, an edge to it that usually comes out when she’s laughing at Sakura (and the look on Sakura’s face is hilarious: wide-eyed with either panic or indignation, starting to go red) and grabs Riku by his elbow. “Enjoy the rest of your date, Billboard Brow!”

Riku isn’t the peacemaker, back home. That’s Sora. (Usually, Riku’s the backup, because usually Kairi’s starting the fights. Sometimes he starts them and Kairi’s _his_ backup. Sora is never backup because Sora thinks everyone should get along and pulls out the watery eyes and boo-boo lip in response to harsh tones, like he’s gonna save the whole world by looking sad at it.) But he feels like that whole conversation was a couple steps away from blowing up in all their faces and pats himself on the back for getting out of it with only the distant explosion of Sakura and Naruto’s fury.

Riku _really_ doesn’t get why those two doesn’t get along better. They have the same obnoxious sense of humor and similar reactions most of the time.

Ino does _not_ share their obnoxious sense of humor; Ino’s sense of humor has thorns. She looks smugly satisfied as she hauls him further and further away from the other team. It’s just about noon, and Konoha’s rebounded enough from the attack that the lunch crowds are thick but not overwhelming. People are chatting and laughing, and the good mood is contagious—especially since Riku has a filter between his nose and the veil of perfume-cologne-sweat-food, all overlaid with Konoha’s signature leaves-grass-plants-dirt smell.

“Do you want to get lunch?” he asks as they wander past about the fifth stand with sizzling meat. At this point, he’s not even picky about what kind of meat it is, or what it’s seasoned with—everything smells delicious, and his wallet in his pocket has what’s left of his last paycheck. “I’ll buy.”

She shoots him a narrow-eyed look. “Three things. One: this isn’t a date, and I don’t let boys buy for me unless we’re dating.” He shrugs, willing to concede that one. She probably has more munny than he does, anyway. “Two: I’m on a diet, and any of this,” she waves a hand at the row of appetizing restaurants, “would ruin my figure.”

Not about to touch _that_ mess, he asks, “And number three?”

She considers him for a long moment, then grins. “When we _do_ go on a date, I expect _you_ to cook, since I know you can.”

That seems like a tall order; sure, he can, but he’s not a professional or anything. He starts to say something to that effect, but she cuts him off with another wave of her hand and doesn’t let him get a word of protest in all the way to her family’s flower shop.

She leaves him at the door, and Riku takes his time wandering back home, enjoying his day off from the hospital. He’s not taking _training_ off, but that’s not for a few more hours. He’ll once again have the apartment to himself, since Naruto probably won’t come back before his mission; that will give Riku at least an hour to relax _and_ time to practice his stances with the key, which started sounding like a good idea right around when Tenten offhandedly mentioned that staff skills transfer easily to swords.

His mind stays a couple steps ahead of him, planning out his afternoon, so he gets to the top of the stairs before noticing two dark figures at his door. Riku’s first thought is, _oh shit, Itachi_ _’s back_ , and instead of being stupid and confronting them, he spins around and goes back the way he came.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t learned how to safely make the leap down yet, and the figures catch him on the stairs. A burst of pain, and his vision goes black.

///

He wakes up twice, briefly. They don’t hit him again, though, just press something foul-smelling and soft to his face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update should be in the next week or two; the rest of the fic is written, it just needs editing, so I should be able to post next weekend unless a lot of stuff comes up.
> 
> Since the rest of the fic is written, the chapter count is basically finalized; I highly doubt I'll be adding/taking out any more chapters at this point. Also, I can definitively promise that this fic _will be completely up before the end of the year_. Right now, I'm looking at weekly or bi-weekly updates.
> 
> Also, I'm writing the sequel and working on side-stories that bridge the gap between the two. :)


	15. Riku and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite everything he has going for him, Riku sadly does not get a storybook rescue. He does get some answers, though!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: descriptions of violence, including one graphic description of killing intent directed at Riku; animal death (for food); some light ninja worldbuilding; also, this chapter has a pretty heavy focus on OCs
> 
> It's not necessary to read chapter 5 of _the best people_ before this one, but that sheds some additional light on the situation, so go check it out.

When Riku wakes up the third time, his eyes feel gritty and his mouth tastes like the aftermath of being sick. A better ninja might be able to hide the fact that he’s awake, but Riku groans as his body registers a bruise or a lump on the back of his head, and then he’s got a tall, dark shape looming over him.

“Kid’s awake,” the shape says, poking him in the ribs with a foot. “Hey, kid, quit complaining.”

Riku blinks his eyes until his vision stops swimming. Once he can focus, he registers, in order:

  1. The man standing over him has a Cloud Village forehead-protector, burn scars all over his face, and a disturbing grin. He’s tall, broad, with brown eyes, skin the same shade as Riku’s, and the top of his head covered by dark blue cloth. His cloak could be hiding numerous weapons, but Riku clocks the distinctive shape of a weapons-pouch on his thigh.
  2. Riku’s forearms are tied together behind his back, and his ankles have a rope tied between them. He can probably walk, but he won’t be able to get very far.
  3. It probably doesn’t matter that he didn’t think to bring his knives to the movies—surely these guys would have taken them away—but he feels more vulnerable without the weapons.
  4. If he summons his key, he can only do it once with the element of surprise, and right now, it wouldn’t do him any good.
  5. The other shape, sitting by a campfire, broadcasts killing intent.



The Cloud-nin pulls him to his feet with a grin and then tugs Riku over to the fire. Proximity makes the killing intent worse; when Sakura said it could cause hallucinations, he believed her, but now he _understands_ what she meant. He’s getting the distinct impression that this second ninja would really like to shove him face-first in the fire and hold him down until he stopped twitching, and even in his nightmares, Riku’s imagination has never been that horrifically graphic.

“Hatake Riku,” Mr. Killing Intent says. He has a Cloud Village forehead-protector as well, so Riku’s thought of Itachi yesterday was way off the mark. (Is that a good thing? Probably, because everything Riku knows points to Itachi being an unstoppable machine of a ninja, and that would pretty much eliminate any chance for rescue or escape. He doesn’t know anything about these Cloud-nin, besides that this guy wants to kill him, so that’s a risk, but Riku’ll take it.) “I never thought I’d see the day when _that bastard_ had a son.”

While Riku might think some harsh things about his dad, from what he’s heard, Hatake Sho just plain wasn’t around long enough to leave someone with such a bad impression. He opens his mouth. The reality of his situation asserts itself. He snaps his mouth shut.

Mr. Killing Intent’s eyes narrow, and suddenly he’s in Riku’s face. He’s short for an adult, just barely taller than Riku himself, but even with cloaks on, Riku can tell either one of these men could break him in two. Mr. Killing Intent’s face isn’t scarred but harshly angular, sharp chin and cheekbones under close-cropped brown hair. “Got something to say, kid?”

There’s no good answer here. Maybe _real_ Academy students get lessons on how not to get killed when they’re kidnapped, but Riku got the accelerated curriculum and Iruka never covered that. He swallows, tries to think around a cotton blanket in his head, and finally comes up with, “Why do you hate my uncle?”

“Uncle?” Confusion takes both men aback, and they exchange glances. The taller one wrenches Riku’s upper arm, yanking Riku around to face him, with Mr. Killing Intent at his back where Riku least wants him. “Who’s your uncle?”

“Hatake Kakashi?” Riku’s voice cracks on the name. If he really _were_ a storybook hero, that would be his uncle’s signal to descend from the trees and rescue him. Riku might have a magic weapon, a missing dad, and a faraway birthplace, but he apparently doesn’t rate nick-of-time rescue. “The Copycat-Ninja?”

“Friend-Killer Kakashi,” Mr. Killing Intent sneers, uncomfortably close behind Riku, “isn’t your father?”

“No.”

The taller one looks over Riku’s shoulder, presumably at Mr. Killing Intent. When his eyes meet Riku’s again, he offers a humorless smile.

“Well, how about that. Didn’t know that guy had any siblings.”

Mr. Killing Intent seems to think that Riku’s lying—what would be the _point_? Riku has enough self-preservation not to ask—but both men seem done with him after that. They split rations, and each of them downs a pill with water before the taller one hoists Riku onto his shoulder like Riku’s a sack of flour.

“If I have to drop you,” he says cheerfully, “or if you start screaming, or struggling, or, really, if you’re annoying, I’m not gonna do anything to you.” He pauses, and Riku’s breath catches in his throat, dread curdling in his gut. “I’m just gonna leave you alone with my buddy here, take a little walk to clear my head. Probably about…ten minutes sounds good, doesn’t it?” He laughs, jostling Riku, his shoulder digging into Riku’s stomach and ribs. “My friend here has some _issues_ with your uncle to work out. I don’t think you want him to work them out on you, though, do you?”

Threat given and received. “No.”

“Great! That’s great, kid. Knew you looked like a smart one. Now, keep your trap shut, and if you throw up on me, I’ll be needing that walk.” With that, he and Mr. Killing Intent leap up into the trees, jumping from branch to branch.

The taller one’s grip on Riku doesn’t even pretend to slip, which is horrifyingly reassuring. Riku closes his eyes and concentrates on smells—there’s just a hint of jasmine-and-popcorn, almost overwhelmed by the gunpowder-metal-blood smell of the two Cloud ninja.

If he shuts his eyes and tries, he can pretend it’s not kidnappers. Kakashi smells like gunpowder and metal and, sometimes, blood. (Gai doesn’t. Gai is still in the village, awaiting a surgery with a 50% chance of death. Riku may never see Gai again.)

No, nope, bad train of thought.

Riku tells himself as many of the stories of Leviathan as he can remember. There are the origin stories, of course, but there are also the stories of Summoners, and the other gods.

There’s the story of Ifrit, who gave fire to humans and was cursed to burn alive, forever, in the center of the earth. Volcanic eruptions are the only time he gets to see the world, and when he does, he creates new islands for the humans he so loves.

There’s Valefor, who was human once, but loved her husband so much that she walked into the ocean and refused to leave without his soul. She made it all the way to the deepest trench, to guarantee she would face Leviathan. The god told her she could have the soul she sought if she returned to the land without looking back. She agreed, and she did it, making it back to the shoreline with no proof that her husband was with her except her faith.

She and her husband were reborn as twins, Valefor and Ixion, and when they died a second time, they were reborn a second time as gods, known as the Stormwatch. Before, the souls of the dead stayed with Leviathan in eternal peace; now, they return to the land of the living as new people, all their past mistakes and flaws washed clean. Valefor and Ixion make sure that, when souls are ready to be reborn, those souls make it back to shore. Valefor’s Lament is Kairi’s favorite story.

Sora’s favorite is Bahamut, who carries the world on his back. He can appear as a whale, or a dragon, or a bull, and whenever he shows up in a story, it's to ruin some evildoer’s day. He only shows up when it’s important, though, because every time he does, he risks the entire world falling into the void. Sora mostly seems to like how epic his beat-downs are.

By the time Riku’s through mentally reciting as many Bahamut tales as he can remember, the Cloud ninja have moved from a forest to an open plain. They don’t _stop_ , though, even though it’s dark out and Riku must be weighing the taller one down.

Riku watches the moon rise, and sometime shortly after that, he must fall asleep.

///

They’ve gone from flatlands to rocky foothills by the fourth time Riku wakes up. It’s also early morning, so surely someone will have missed him by now. Even if Tenten’s distracted worrying about Gai, Naruto will—

No, wait, Naruto and his team were heading out on a mission. Kakashi had even stopped by and dropped off extra munny for Riku because of it. He’d ruffled Riku’s hair and told him to be a good boy and take care. Sakura had _said_ they were due for that mission, the last time he saw her.

There’s no cotton between his ears like yesterday, but now his head throbs. His thoughts scatter and putting them into order is like trying to dig out and piece together a broken seashell on the beach: there’s so little of what he’s going for, and so much of everything else.

Fear, mostly. He’s seen what happens to ninja in this world. They _die_. He might never see his mom again, might never tell her he loves her. The last time he saw Sora, his _best friend_ was pale and in pain, suffering in his bed because Riku put him there. His last words to Kairi might very well have been a promise he can’t keep.

Shaking all that away takes longer, this time, but he manages it.

Okay. New timetable. Tenten might notice he didn’t come to training, but that might not be enough to raise an alarm, especially if she hears that he took the day off. Since he lost the cooking gig, that’s his only evening commitment. If not Tenten, then who would he see next?

Tsuru will expect him around nine—a couple hours from now, by Riku’s guess. She’ll be looking forward to teasing him, and if he doesn’t show, she’ll most likely head to his apartment to see what’s wrong. On the Islands, that would be enough; surely _that_ won’t be different in Konoha? Kids can’t just go missing overnight without people getting involved, can they?

Riku hopes not.

The taller Cloud ninja gives Riku half a ration bar. Mr. Killing Intent sneers at him for it and says that Riku will be easier to manage hungry. The taller ninja shrugs that off, then once again hoists Riku up and over his shoulder.

Riku has a lot of questions, but none of them are worth jeopardizing his safety. For now, the best he can do is keep his mouth shut, take what they give him, and try to stay alive. They haven’t killed him yet, which means they must need him for something. Until he finds out what that is, there’s really nothing he can do. Pay attention and wait is all he’s got.

(And his attention, now, is worth more than it would’ve been on the Islands: he notices that Mr. Killing Intent is left-handed, that the Cloud-nin carrying him moves stiffly in the morning, that the further they travel the colder it gets. They don’t talk like friends would, and while Mr. Killing Intent is the more obvious threat, he also seems to defer to the Cloud-nin. Ninja typically have teams of three or solo missions, so either there’s a third person Riku hasn’t seen yet or something weird’s going on.)

Pay attention and wait, he tells himself, will be enough. It must be.

///

Late on the second day, they hit actual snow. The ninja don’t slow down.

Riku _hates_ snow.

His pants, while thick enough to keep most of the chill out before, aren’t snow- or water-repellent. The Cloud-nin doesn’t drop Riku into any snow piles or anything, but once it starts falling from the sky, the Cloud-nin doesn’t go out of his way to shield Riku, either.

Snowflakes melt. When they melt on his pants, there’s not much he can do to keep those pants from becoming damp.

The shirt’s even worse. It has sleeves, but they don’t even go to his elbows, and the material isn’t all that thick. The scarf helps a bit, keeping his neck warm and mostly dry.

Once parts of him are damp, though, in the freezing temperatures, Riku’s made up his mind. Snow is awful and being wet in the snow is _more_ awful.

When the Cloud-nin sets him down underneath a rock overhang and then starts a fire nearby, Riku’s instant gratification—warmth! _Soon-to-be dry clothes!_ —is marred by his suspicions. Mr. Killing Intent is nowhere to be seen, too, which is suspicious in itself.

Sure enough, the Cloud-nin is buttering him up to ask him about Kakashi. Specifically, how close they are. Or, at least, Riku figures that’s the point of the opening, “So, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of the Copycat-nin having a brother. He must keep it quiet, huh?”

Riku considers. On the one hand, he wants to see his mom and Kairi and Sora again. He doesn’t want to die in this godforsaken _snow_. On the other hand, he’s nearly certain he can’t tell this guy anything he wants to hear, and even if Riku _could_ , he _wouldn_ _’t_.

Riku is a shitty liar, but there’s the truth and there’s the _truth_. “It’s not like that. My dad’s an embarrassment.”

“Oh?”

A nod, and Riku pulls himself a little closer to the fire. His arms are still tied behind his back, his ankles still hobbled; he keeps an eye on the Cloud-nin, just in case his movement is taken the wrong way, but there’s not a lot he can _do_. Kick burning wood at the guy, maybe, and then die horribly miles away from anyone who cares about him.

No thanks.

“He ran out of Konoha when he was just a genin,” Riku says, trying to sound scornful without sounding like he’s faking it. It’s easier than he’d have guessed. “He left when I was a little kid, too. If I were Kakashi, I wouldn’t want anyone to know about him.”

“Huh.” A pause, and Riku inches even closer to the fire, angling so that the worst wet patch on his right shin is closest to the flames. “Sounds like you don’t like your old man much.”

Shrug. “I don’t care about him.” When he thinks about Sho too much, he starts to, but really, the man hasn’t been around for close to nine years. Riku has more of a relationship with the gate guards whose names he doesn’t remember than that guy.

There’s a pause while Riku tries to dry off as best he can—at least his kidnappers picked a dry spot to camp in—and the Cloud-nin stares off into the growing darkness.

Hopefully, nothing Riku said was actionable; he’s not sure how it could be, but he hasn’t been a ninja for very long.

Mr. Killing Intent materializes out of the darkness. Riku _knows_ it’s the body flicker jutsu, but that doesn’t keep him from jerking away, heart suddenly pounding in his ears and his breath coming in fast pants. It’s not that he realizes the man could kill Riku if he wanted to—the guy seems to _want to_ , it’s just that there’s something preventing him from acting on that desire. Riku has no control over any of it, though. If the situation changes, he’ll be dead without any warning or hope of escape.

His fingers twitch, a little, gripping the air behind his back like the handle of the key. He resolutely doesn’t think about it, doesn’t summon it. He only has one shot to make that work, and now isn’t the time.

Mr. Killing Intent has a brace of rabbits that he proceeds to skin and clean right there next to the fire. Riku’s entranced, appalled, incapable of looking away. The man peels the skin off like he wants to turn his knife on Riku.

Even the smell of cooking meat isn’t enough to revive Riku’s appetite after that.

The Cloud-nin makes him eat one anyway, pressing it into Riku’s face until it’s either bite or topple backward. Chewing mechanically, Riku tries not to meet either of the men’s eyes. He can feel both gazes, though, heavy and burning, and finds it hard to swallow.

“Riku here was just telling me about his dad,” the Cloud-nin says when the rabbits are all gone, voice full of false cheer and hand like a weight on Riku’s head. Like Riku’s a little kid who’s done something adorable. “The man’s a deserter.”

Mr. Killing Intent seems to consider that. Riku’s not sure whether ‘deserter’ is any better than ‘friend-killer,’ and it looks like Mr. Killing Intent isn’t sure about that calculation, either. His expression turns assessing, and he says, in a voice like gravel and about as welcoming, “You take after your father, kid?”

There’s a right and a wrong answer here, Riku’s sure of it. Which is which escapes him. Maybe he really won’t get to see Sora or Kairi or his mom again; at least he got to be warm one more time. He raises his chin, meets that cold, narrowed, black gaze. “Not really.”

The Cloud-nin laughs. “There’s guts,” he says, patting Riku’s head again, like you pat a dog.

Mr. Killing Intent doesn’t move, doesn’t react, doesn’t say anything. His eyes stay narrowed and assessing. Riku feels his chin start to wobble a bit and clenches his jaw, refuses to shudder or shake or cry in front of this man if he can help it.

Is this how Chouji felt, facing Gaara? Or did he not know what he was walking into? Is this how the other kid, the one with the bugs, felt?

Or is this more how the Sound-nin Hayashi murdered felt, just before his death?

It takes everything he has to swallow down his rising bile, the rabbit threatening to hop right back up his throat.

Then Mr. Killing Intent turns away, addressing only the Cloud-nin when he says, “First watch.” He disappears, but Riku can still _smell_ him, acrid and bloody from killing the rabbits; he can’t be any further than on top of the overhang.

The Cloud-nin ruffles Riku’s hair. “Deep breaths. The scary ninja is gone.” His tone and his eyes say he’s laughing at Riku, even though his smile is seemingly kind, small enough that the scars across his face don’t twist it any. “Best you get to sleep. We’ll be moving early tomorrow.” Beat. “I wouldn’t try anything tonight. My pal up there is a little on-edge.” The Cloud-nin leans down into Riku’s space, conspiratorial. “He doesn’t like the Land of Snow much more than he likes your uncle.” And then, with a laugh, he lays out his bedroll and does a magnificent job of faking falling asleep.

Riku curls up into a little ball as close to the fire as he deems safe. Taking deep breaths helps; not only does his heartbeat calm down, but he stops feeling like he’s going to cry.

///

He’s woken up during the night, once. Mr. Killing Intent stares at him, unblinking, while the Cloud-nin sleeps nearby.

“I could kill you easily,” Mr. Killing Intent says, casual, no actual malice or threat in the words. They’re just factual. “The only reason you’re still alive is because I think it’ll be easier to lure your uncle out this way.”

Riku hauls himself into a sitting position, refusing to have this conversation prone. He isn’t any kind of threat to either of the ninja, anyway; he might as well sit up. “What’d Kakashi even do to you? Why do you hate him so much?”

Mr. Killing Intent snarls. “You think he got his title, his reputation, without killing his way across battlefield after battlefield? I’m not the only one who hates him, kid, and I’m sure I don’t even hate him the most. The difference is that I’m gonna be the one to _kill_ him.”

Put like that, ninja sound like pirates back home: marauders who leave destruction and death in their wake. Riku swallows. Nothing in Sakura’s tutoring, in Iruka’s instruction, gave him the impression that _Konoha_ was like that.

Does he believe this one guy who kidnapped him, or all his friends, his teachers, the people he trusts?

“What makes you think you can?” Riku asks.

He flinches when Mr. Killing Intent lunges at him, teeth bared, breath sour. Up close, the smell of blood and gunpowder and cooked meat is overwhelming, nauseating.

“That’s what you’re here for,” Riku’s told, and while the face in front of him is smiling, there’s no joy in the expression, no happiness. “That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

“Go to sleep,” the Cloud-nin says, standing directly behind Mr. Killing Intent. Riku didn’t even see or hear him wake up, let alone get right next to them. “I’ll take this watch.”

Mr. Killing Intent retreats without a grumble, taking the bedroll and turning his back on Riku with what feels like deliberation. The Cloud-nin rolls his eyes and tells Riku to get back to sleep before seeming to melt into the darkness.

Riku doesn’t have the knack for falling asleep anywhere that some of his friends have, and he doesn’t want to be vulnerable around Mr. Killing Intent again. Nevertheless, once the adrenaline leeches out of him, his eyelids go heavy.

///

In his dream, he’s curled up in a ball. There’s solid glass beneath him and a comforting blanket of darkness all around; if there’s anyone else in the dream, he can at least pretend they can’t see him.

Face pressed to his knees, he can pretend he isn’t crying. His shoulders could just be shaking from the cold, from the wrung-out aftermath of an adrenaline rush. His breath could be catching in his lungs for the same reason, not a muddled mix of fear and upset. His face could be wet with sweat, not tears, now dampening the dream-dry knees of his pants.

There’s no sense of time to his dream, so Riku couldn’t say how long he sits like that before he hears the clatter of metal boots on magic glass. His body doesn’t even tense up, that’s how drained he is. He just huddles into himself even more, a sick certainty settling in his gut that this will be one of the dreams he dies in.

Instead, a clatter right next to him precedes a warm metal hand touching his shoulder, tentative and light. Riku doesn’t look up. The gauntlet pulls back for a moment and the figure shifts, metal clinking, until Riku’s pretty sure the person is in front of him.

With slow movements, the metal hand returns to his shoulder, rubbing just a bit, like Sora might do if he found Riku this upset. It’s joined by the other hand on Riku’s other shoulder. Slowly, painstakingly, the figure coaxes Riku out of his ball of misery, pulling him into a hug.

Resolutely, Riku buries his face in a metal shoulder, his eyes sealed shut with tears. He hooks his arms around the middle of the suit of armor, his legs following stiffly, so he’s kind of still a ball, just wrapped around something other than himself. The armor digs into his sides, the thinner skin of his forearms, his thighs. With a sniff, he tries his hardest to bury his face into the armor’s neck, which is covered but not plated. His cheek scrapes against the pauldron, but he doesn’t care.

The armored hand moves to the back of his head, stroking. It’s not like when Kairi ran her fingers through his hair, but it gives him a similar sense of comfort, of grounding, of safety. This is the same glass platform that spat up shadows to attack him, he’s pretty sure, but right now, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care.

The suit of armor’s other hand is on his back, rubbing in broad, slow circles.

Riku stays like that for a while; if there’s any other parts to the dream, he doesn’t remember them when he wakes up.

///

The ninja are already moving when Riku comes to; his view, bouncing over the shoulder of the larger one, is obscured by heavier snowfall. They move quickly, but not fast enough to avoid all the snowflakes, which land on Riku and start soaking through his shirt and pants immediately.

The Cloud-nin and Mr. Killing Intent have cloaks to keep themselves dry. Riku shivers and tries not to sneeze.

By the late morning, they’ve reached some kind of fortress. Riku gets put down, one hand resting on his shoulder as both warning and threat, and the ninja tell the gate guards that they’re expected. From there, Riku tries to pay attention, but he’s soaking wet and miserable.

There are a _lot_ of guards, all in plate armor like Riku’s never seen outside of books. ( _Unlike_ the kind of armor from his dream, this looks older, less sleek.) Some of them have headbands with a symbol Riku doesn’t recognize. There seem to be regular patrols—Riku counts half-a-dozen groups of two to four—in addition to the six guards (three in front and three behind) who escort Riku and his captors to “Lord Kazahana.”

Lord Kazahana’s throne room is a monstrosity: it’s too large, with a huge staircase leading up to the throne itself. Perfect for looking down on people, useless for anything else. Riku hates this guy immediately. The only leaders he’s ever known (Kairi’s mom and the Hokage) would never create something like this, much less use it.

The Cloud-nin and Mr. Killing Intent walk Riku up all those stairs. Riku’s expecting them to bow when they reach the top and stand in front of the guy in the throne, but they don’t. They stay upright, forcing Lord Kazahana to look up to meet their eyes.

Lord Kazahana stands; he’s about the same height as the Cloud-nin, and thickly-built, with lines on his face that make him look stern and unpleasant. His black hair is pulled back, leaving the rectangle of his face open. His eyes, a dull bathwater-blue, skim over the adults before landing on Riku.

He slowly scrutinizes Riku from the top of his head to his shoes, and when his eyes rise, the look on his face is gleeful.

“Good work,” he says, barely looking at the ninja. “I’ve paid your Raikage already. You’re dismissed.”

Mr. Killing Intent lives up to his nickname and _radiates_ rage. Even the Cloud-nin looks affronted, though.

“What’s your plan for him?” the Cloud-nin asks, and the hand he still has on Riku’s shoulder squeezes, pulling him back a step. Riku keeps his feet under him and doesn’t go tumbling backward down the stairs, but for a split second, he’s worried about the possibility. The glare he shoots the man goes ignored.

Lord Kazahana sniffs. “That’s none of your concern. You’ve completed your job and I’ve given payment. You are _dismissed_.”

Three more ninja appear beside Lord Kazahana, all with the foreign symbol on their forehead-protectors. Up close, Riku can see that it’s a cluster of four dots. He still doesn’t recognize it.

“I’m just curious,” the Cloud-nin says, very casual, fingers still pressed tight into Riku’s shoulder. His thumb is worryingly close to Riku’s shoulder joint. “We bonded on the trip over. He’s seen our faces. You’re going to piss off the Copycat-nin, and you used us to do it.”

The ninja nearest Lord Kazahana scoffs. “As if Cloud didn’t jump at the chance to rub Konoha’s weakness in its face.”

The Cloud-nin shrugs. “Well, sure. But Cloud’s not going to take responsibility for killing any of Konoha’s genin just to piss off one jounin.”

“Oh, he won’t die,” Lord Kazahana says, lips curling in an approximation of a smile. Riku shudders. “That isn’t why I had you bring him all the way here.” He pauses a moment, staring into Riku’s face, before looking at the Cloud-nin again. “If Copycat-nin Kakashi is your concern, you should be aware that he’s on his way here.”

Mr. Killing Intent goes rigid; Riku’s not the only one who notices. All three of the foreign ninja glance at him, and the one closest to Lord Kazahana—the leader? Or just the speaker for the other two?—chuckles.

“Does an illustrious shinobi of Cloud fear the Copycat-nin?” he asks, tone dripping pettiness. “Or did you think to lure him into the open with bait?”

Mr. Killing Intent sounds even less impressed with this guy than he’d been with Riku. “If the deserters and second-rate shinobi who make up Snow’s ninja ranks think they can defeat the Friend-killer,” he says, speaking slowly, as if to a child, “I am sure the Raikage will figure out some use for this border, when it’s empty.”

The leader of the ninja trio snarls, but Lord Kazahana restrains him with the wave of a hand. “Nadare,” he says, “prepare a room for our guest. Mizore, Fubuki, escort the Cloud ninja out. They have overstayed their welcome.”

The Cloud-nin lets go of Riku. He and Mr. Killing Intent are led away, although Riku gets the distinct impression that, had they chosen not to, the two Snow ninja couldn’t have forced them. The leader disappears in a swirl of snow, leaving Riku alone with Lord Kazahana.

“What a remarkably lucky turn of events,” the lord says, tone musing, as he sinks back down into his throne. He’s looking at Riku and smiling. “To think, when I first contracted Cloud to bring you here, I had no idea that your uncle would be coming as well. And here we are!”

Riku shifts, gaze not leaving Lord Kazahana’s beaming face even as he tries to note how many guards are left in the room. Some of them walked out with the two Cloud ninja, but not all of them, and even a handful would still be able to beat him, especially tied up and hobbled as he is.

“Now, I have an offer for you,” and all Riku’s attention returns to the lord. “I understand you’re a genin, yes?” At Riku’s cautious nod, his smile seems to grow. “Excellent. You can join the Village Hidden in the Snow, and you’ll be a chuunin within the year. I take a hands-on approach to the ninja village, you see, and I like to see ambitious, talented young people rewarded.”

Riku can’t think of anything he’d like _less_ , but he bites the inside of his cheek.

Lord Kazahana doesn’t seem to need any response. “And all you have to do is kill your uncle.” He’s still smiling as he says it. “Just think of the renown you would have! The boy who killed the Copycat-nin! And, of course, the Village Hidden in the Snow would protect you from Konoha’s wrath.”

The look on Riku’s face must communicate his immediate, overwhelming emotional response of _fuck no, and fuck you_ , because Lord Kazahana’s smile drops. “I see. Are you close to your uncle, then? A warm, loving family?” The lord’s voice is thick with skepticism and disapproval. “Well. Some time in the dungeon may change your mind.” And, with a wave of his hand, two guards appear on either side of Riku, each grabbing hold of one shoulder and marching him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo sorry if you were looking forward to Itachi kidnapping Riku, but uh. Riku needs to be alive for the sequel. (Besides, only one member of Akatsuki currently even knows or cares about Riku's existence, and that is [REDACTED].)
> 
> Originally (I mean, back when I was first-first writing this story), Riku was going to be drafted into Team 7 for this mission. When I started revising, it occurred to me that Riku getting kidnapped into it would be a lot better, narratively, and here we are!
> 
> Next chapter, Team 7 arrives on the scene. :) I'm shooting for next weekend, but I might get drowned in work, so we'll see.


End file.
